Chiara Maxia

What was your favorite book as a child?

I don’t remember having one in particular, but I have a precious memory related to Roal Dahl’s Matilda: my parents had brought me to a dinner party, and while the adults played board games, I had curled up in an armchair with the aforementioned book, and got so into it that I didn’t realise the time passing or what was happening around me — at midnight I was brought back to reality by a line of grownups clinking their glasses against my coke because my birthday had just started — I was now eight.

What was the original reason or motivation why you started writing creatively?

That’s always a difficult question, as in my case there wasn’t a pivotal moment, it just happened: at some point I realised I was full of stories, poems and notebooks filled up to capacity.

What was the most adventurous or thrilling thing you ever did/experienced?

If I have to pick one, I’d say it was quite an adventure to move to Moscow without knowing anyone or having an acceptable level of Russian — still, once there I met some really great people and learned a lot!

Do you listen to music while reading or writing?

There’s a lot of music that puts me in the right mood for writing, mostly blues, dreampop and shoegaze. I have a playlist called “music to write to” on my Spotify.