She thinks she has just come out of her shell because she recently finished university. I believe that I have in front of me one of the most mature, cultured and empowered women I have met this year. To talk to Lara Ferrer (Alzira, 1999) is to learn about the parallels between the regulation of criminal liability for the creation of war propaganda in World War II and today, to discover the obstacles faced by generation Z and to delve into the workings of the publishing sector.
Lara Ferrer, director of Editorial Gusanillo,a publishing house specialising in values education and illustration, is the third and final winner of the wayCO 2022 grant for women entrepreneurs.
Tell us a little about Editorial Gusanillo…
This project was born in the middle of the pandemic as a result of a children’s story project on financial education proposed to me by my colleague Amadeo. After my personal experience of publishing my book in 2019, I already knew what conditions I wanted and what conditions I didn’t want. One day, during a meeting with a retired publisher, we thought that perhaps we were not going to find the publishing house we were looking for and that the solution would be to create it ourselves. And so, with practically no investment, in a very complicated context – with no authors, no office and almost no idea – we started the publishing house that has given us so much joy and so many heart attacks.
What are these conditions?
We take care of publishing authors and illustrators who have not published before and we focus on rounding up projects. This means that we take care of the proofreading, illustration and editing of these projects until the book is finished and finally all the promotion, workshops, presentations, signings… begins.
Your editorial line focuses on social and cultural integration, making visible issues that are ignored in mainstream publishing. Do you think this is due to a generational perception of reality?
Of course there is a generational link and thank goodness, because that means that the coming generations are much more aware of different types of realities that, no matter how much people decide to try to cover up, silence, hide… These are realities that will continue to exist. LGTBIQ+ inclusion, autism or care for the elderly is closely related to Generation Z because their problems are issues that affect and concern us.
In our publishing house we are clear that everything that is not named tends not to exist in society, and this is 100% true. The problems and the different realities with which we coexist will continue to exist, the best thing we can do is to create tools with a great didactic load of value to be able to face and manage the emotions that may arise.
Anyone would think that you aspire to transform Spanish society and the Spanish education system.
Publishing houses like ours play a very important role in the educational system; basically because what we do is to use literature, that is, stories to explain complicated problems in a simple way. Stories become a tool, and that’s why at the publishing house we deal so much with teachers, we go into schools, we do workshops, literary experiences…. And over time, you see a very important improvement in the classroom, both in schools and in high schools.
Have you ever felt judged professionally because of your age?
I’m from ’99 and obviously, many people don’t take me seriously as a businesswoman, they don’t take me seriously as a publisher and I often have to deal with that; but well, that doesn’t stop me. It’s also true that although statistics show that there are more women readers, writers, illustrators and publishers, the publishing sector is still a sector where there are a lot of men, something that, together with my age, also works against me sometimes, fortunately, less and less. And honestly, my partner and I are aware of that and as we know who is going to get the target depending on what situations, we work on that basis.
Why did you apply for the wayCO scholarship?
It was a space that we came to visit when we were looking for a coworking space in Valencia, but at that time, we had just started and financially, we couldn’t afford to join wayCO. We were left with a thorn in our side and when we saw that the wayCO scholarship for women entrepreneurs was available, we didn’t even think about it. During this year, the wayCO scholarship has allowed us to meet many new people, companies that we wouldn’t have met in any other way, people from other countries? And what’s more, we have also been able to work in a space as creative as we are.
– Video of Lara Ferrer’s interview in wayCO Abastos
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