“Between 2013 and 2014, I wrote a bunch of short stories just for the sake of it. The kind you don’t write under pressure to submit, but rather the ones that just come to you and you tuck away in a drawer,” she recalled. “Last year, I found out thatLa Casa de los Escritores was holding a short story contest. At the time, I was doing an internship, had two freelance jobs, and was taking classes in college. So taking on a writing project seemed like a pipe dream. I thought about not entering, but then I remembered those writings from previous years that had never seen the light of day. I selected the ones I thought were presentable, copied them all into a Word document, and sent them in.”
When he collected the stories, he noticed they had a common thread. “And I couldn’t explain that thread with any word I knew. To find a title, I searched for neologisms on Google. And the one that came up was ‘Adronitis,’ which means: ‘the disappointment that comes from having known people for too long.’ All the stories are about that; that aspect of a friend’s personality you didn’t know, that thing that surprised you about a family member or about yourself.”
His work *Adronitis* won first prize in the 2015 Casa de los Escritores del Uruguay Young Writers’ Fiction Contest and was published in 2016—and presented at the Montevideo City Government Book Fair—alongside *La nitidez secreta de las cosas* by literature professor and poet Mathías Iguiniz.
“Half his poems, half my stories,” is how Milkewitz summed it up. He is in the final stages of hisbachelor’s degree in Communication with a concentration in Journalism and is currently working on his thesis.
“Once the publication process was underway, I continued to be surprised. The stories were to be published alongside the poems by the first-prize winner in the poetry category.” Milkewitz didn’t know Iguiniz. “I found out that his poems were titled *The Secret Clarity of Things*, which meant that both his work and mine were oriented toward a hidden realm.”
This is the first book he has published as a co-author. Previously, he contributed to three anthologies: *Pelado pero con trenza*, *A la luz de la luna* , and *Lluvia de versos*, the latter two of which were published in Spain. In 2013, he won the short story contest hosted by the radio program *En Perspectiva* twice, and in 2014, he received an honorable mention in Italcred’s *Tu mundo crece* contest.
When I was 13, I started attending Andrea Durlacher’s writing workshop as an extracurricular activity at my high school; later, I continued going to the teacher’s parents’ house, and over the years, to her own home. “She has guided—and continues to guide—my entire creative process as a writer. In fact, she was the one who encouraged me to pursue a bachelor’s degree in communication. My college professor, René Fuentes, gave me a wonderful opportunity to serve as his teaching assistant in Creative Writing for a semester.”
Milkewitz has been part of the production team at En Perspectiva since 2015, where he runs the blog ¿Por qué a mí? Since 2012, he has performed on various stages as a stand-up comedian.
“I don’t know what I’ll do in the future,” he says. “All I know is that I’ll keep writing.”
The book *Adronitis/The Secret Clarity of Things* is sold directly by the authors. For more information, please contact carolmilkewitz@hotmail.com directly.