Melina Alexia Varnavoglou

It took Melina quite some time to understand that solitude is not the ideal condition for writing. For many years, she was captivated by the Woolfian entelechy of “£5000 a year and a room of one’s own.” Later, she realized two things: that this ideal left out the experience of living with others, and that it could only truly work for a writer who is already wealthy or who aspires to devote herself fully to writing. As the Chicana writer Gloria Anzaldúa made clear in her Letter to Third World Women Writers: “Forget the room of your own, write in the kitchen, lock yourself in the bathroom. Write on the bus or while waiting in line at the Social Security Office or at work during lunch, between sleeping and waking.”

Melina echoes these words to frame the project she presents here, one she believes will always run through her writing: the difficulties that economic hardship, violence, and caregiving responsibilities bring to our lives, far from distancing us from artistic creativity, actually enrich the writing experience, filling it with voices and stories; and ultimately, endowing us with greater sensitivity and intelligence to survive and narrate the present.

Melina is an artist-in-residence at Can Serrat in September 2025.