“There is no better ship to travel than a book”, the phrase attributed to Emily Dickenson inspires the talk. The protagonist of this story is a curious woman, a lover of study and research. “I like knowledge for knowledge’s sake,” he says while having his tea and scones at Casa Cavia, one of the most beautiful places in Buenos Aires. She is wearing a white dress, she is simple and pleasant.
Ana Mosqueda She has a doctorate in Written Social History of Culture from the University of Alcalá de Henares, Spain; Graduated in Letters and editor from the University of Buenos Aires. He was a Style Correction teacher for the Editing program at the UBA. She is currently the owner and director of the Ampersand publishing house, located in a distinguished residence in Barrio Parque, which has just received the Konex de Platino 2024 for Labor Editorial.
She is married to businessman Juan Carlos García with whom she has her children, Guadalupe and Juan Agustín. Her husband and daughter Lupe are owners and partners of Mix Casa Gastronómica, with several businesses, including Casa Cavia.
“My parents were very readers and their library fascinated me. They transmitted to me the love for literature, theater, for Federico García Lorca. My dad read popular, scientific, fantasy novels. My mother was more into literature, Argentine, Latin American. Also, I had a very good teacher in high school. That also helped a lot because she was the one who encouraged me,” she remembers.
News: Did you write as a girl?
Ana Mosqueda: I wrote compositions for school and got all A’s. But as I read, I became less encouraged to write. I was from a generation with too much respect for the writers who existed at that time, Cortázar, García Márquez. Nobody dared to write a word. Besides, I couldn’t get away with it, I was never one to sit down and write. It was always difficult for me, mine was on the reading side.
News: And naturally he ended up in a career in Literature.
Mosqueda: Yes, and there I fell in love with Latin and Greek, and I was a Latin teacher for almost fifteen years. After I left college, I went to live in a country house with my family for a few years, but I couldn’t stand it and came back. And there I enrolled in the Editing degree and then I did my doctorate in Spain.
News: Do you agree with that phrase from Emily Dickinson?
Mosqueda: Yes, of course, reading is a journey. It’s the way to see worlds that you will never reach. Reading allows us to travel in time and space, to know places that we will never know. It also allows us to ask ourselves questions that perhaps we would not ask ourselves otherwise or think about things we had never thought about or reaffirm what we already thought.
News: What books marked you?
Mosqueda: It was always the Greek and Latin classics, as a teacher I got to know them very well, and, in addition, I had an excellent Greek teacher who made us read many Greek tragedies and poems. For me, Greco-Latin culture is what we always have to return to. In fact, this year I gave a course because I wanted to return to Latin, on Ovid and Virgil, which was what I taught for so many years in college.
News: What current books or authors interest you?
Mosqueda: I have a lot to read from the publisher and that takes up my time, but I try to stay up to date. Gabriela Cabezón Cámara caught my attention because she has a very particular style, she seems like a great writer to me. Sometimes I try to read something by new authors because we are in a shared program with Malba for resident writers. I went to Colombia, I saw that there were new authors, and I also brought myself to read, and I left many things that are for recreation for the summer.
News: Have you already chosen what you are going to take for the holidays?
Mosqueda: Yes, but it’s all about work, but since I enjoy work a lot, I love everything I take with me. Plus, I like doing things on my own. I buy books and save them, like one on botany and another from L’Encyclopédie, and at some point I take them out and think of an editorial project based on that.
News: What issues are going through you today?
Mosqueda: The issue of old age, very important to think about and rethink about. The issue of the role of women, there are many things that young women do that we did not do, such as the decision not to have children. My daughter, for example, has decided not to have them and I think that’s fine, I respect that. It is very difficult to make that decision, even though it seems easy. I try to understand her and help her. The world is changing a lot in that sense and I like that change for women. I was always interested in the role of women. When I was taking Latin I had already gotten into an interdisciplinary women’s studies group. It seems to me that there is a lot to do and a lot that is said, but not done.
News: In 2012 he created Ampersand. Your goal?
Mosqueda: At first it was a very practical goal. There were no works on the history of written culture, on the history of reading, on the history of writing, there was none of that. All bibliography in foreign languages. So, I said let’s see what the fundamental works of this discipline are and translate them so that the basic books and authors are there to be able to study it.
News: What type of publisher is it?
Mosqueda: A publishing house that tries to make books that are very careful in both content and form. That is the basic principle. The main collection is this book story. Then we have one on fashion history with about ten titles. We always try to strike a balance between translations of foreign authors and Argentine, Latin American or Spanish authors. We also have a collection on communication and language, very current topics, such as memes, but treated seriously. Another of letters, with only one volume, where I intervened, on editorial letters of Aldo Manucio, a 15th century editor. But the collection is going to be of letters from all times and places. In addition, there is a visual communication collection, which has to do with design, and another unusual one, where we put the books that we want to make or that don’t fit with any of the others. And the readers collection with literary books, not technical ones.
News: How do you sustain a publishing house of these characteristics in a country like Argentina?
Mosqueda: I subsidize it. At first, it was putting, putting, putting money. Now we have reached a break-even point, we are very good, we have no profit, but we also have no loss. That is very important, everything was achieved over time and with a lot of work.
News: Do you have a branch in Spain?
Mosqueda: It’s not actually a branch. Four years ago we started working with a Spanish distributor and now we have a presence in bookstores there. We decided to do it in Spain because we saw that there was a lack of bibliography in Spanish on topics related to the history of the book. It seemed to us that there was a niche there and we tried to build it, but it is not easy, it depends on many factors.
News: How is the book market in Argentina?
Mosqueda: People are still buying books, thank God. All small initiatives have good results, which is why more and more of these independent publishers are emerging. Spain envies us a lot because this does not exist there or when an independent publisher emerges it is immediately sold to a large group. Here we don’t have that problem, because no one wants to buy from us, but we have to try to survive. How do we do it? Uniting at fairs, the independent editors’ fair that takes place in August is very important for us, and it is something that does not exist in other countries.
News: What do you think of more commercial literature? For example, the romantic novel.
Mosqueda: My mother read Corín Tellado and I stole it from her to read. That was always there and it seems perfect to me. What should not happen is that the readers’ reading level drops so much that they cannot discern between something that is literature and something that is not, that was written just like that and that became famous for different reasons.
News: What should a good book have?
Mosqueda: It’s difficult to answer that. For me it has to have originality and a command of language that shows that there is a writer behind it, not an author. An author can be anyone.
News: How do technology and networks affect reading and the book industry?
Mosqueda: At first it seemed like it was going to affect the book industry a lot, but in the end it didn’t. The e-book has its niche. I, for example, do not read digital books.
News: What is your personal life like?
Mosqueda: Very nice, I have a very good partner, I have been married for 41 years, and I have my children.
News: How did you manage to stay with your husband for so long?
Mosqueda: The main thing is that each one was able to fulfill themselves, make their life and can continue doing it. For many years I couldn’t do much for my children, for my parents who were old and sick, but I was still in school, active, but with fewer hours. It wasn’t until I was fifty that I published the magazine Páginas de Guarda, about linguistics, editing and written culture, together with two colleagues.
News: He made the life he wanted, then.
Mosqueda: Yes, it is what gives me the most satisfaction, I am very happy. I think that’s what keeps you happy, being able to do what you like.
