"The last "normal" pre-Covid-19 event I remember is travelling to Malta with Barumbara Collective to put up Imagined more than Woman at Muża in February 2020. We were walking down the streets in Valletta when one of the performers, Serena, was telling us about the exaggerated measures, such as closing down schools, they were taking in her home town in Italy because of the virus. I remember us all rolling our eyes. One month later, instead of travelling to Spain to put up our next performance, we were cancelling all our events, as Belgium, like most of Europe, went into total lockdown. I remember saying, it's just for a few weeks, and anyway I need a bit of rest. Between 2017 and early 2020 travelling twice a month had become an exciting but also exhausting normality for me. I knew the pattern would soon have to change. So when confinement was imposed, I welcomed it. And when we were ordered to work from home, I felt things couldn't be better for me. Little did I know, back then, that I would lose friends and relatives to Covid-19, that we'd still be talking about the pandemic in 2022, and that I would, by then, be yearning to go back to my hectic routine. So in March 2020, I put on my pyjamas and switched from performance mode to writing mode, a possibility which, unlike many other performers, I was lucky to have, and focused, among other things, on writing a new novel, Marta Marta, now almost ready and set to come out in April 2022, by Ede Books. 

In December 2019, together with Joe Gatt, we started filming the MagnaTM Mater book-reading episodes (available on Youtube), a project I had been dreaming about for years, knowing I had to wait till 2020 to make it happen. The action in MagnaTM Mater (Merlin Publishers), my YA novel published in 2011, takes place in the near future, precisely in 2020. Back in 2010, I remember having this feeling that something bizarre was going to happen in 2020 which would change the world as we know it. I was thinking of climate change rather than a pandemic. Still, as we were forced to change plans and film the rest of the episodes from home, I felt that this could not be more appropriate in showing how everything turns upside down in 2020.

Technology has thankfully made it possible for events to still take place, at least online, during this pandemic. In 2020, together with Merlin Publishers, Simon Bartolo and I celebrated the 13th anniversary of Sqaq L-Infern on Zoom. The Book Council also did an amazing job to transform that year's book festival into an online one, and I still managed to participate while remaining at home, as well as "attend" all the activities in their programme. But nothing compares to living these encounters in the flesh. I was overjoyed when, in June 2021, Rokit was published in Arabic in Egypt, but also disappointed that there was no live book launch to make it feel like it really happened. These virtual encounters make me feel this is all just a dream.

My house slowly became both my work space and my living space, and more than ever before, there is a strong need to demarcate space and ritualise activities at home. My new Covid-19 home routine has been revised day after day to perfection. Coffee time is not just any time, and meals are not just meals. We too have baked our own bread. Being away from Malta for the longest ever meant we had to make our own ġbejniet and prepare comforting meals such as qarabagħli mimli, kusksu bil-ful, ravjul and qassatat. After the first lockdown, lunch and dinner fused into one meal around 2pm, since two such meals a day quickly translated into 6kg of extra body weight. I have, during all this time, moved furniture around, refurbished bedrooms, emptied drawers and cupboards, threw away stuff I'd been carrying around from one country to another for decades. As weeks slowly flowed into one another, they became indistinguishable, and I find myself referring to last year when I actually mean 2020.

Towards the end of 2021 we were finally talking about live events again. It was great attending Rye Arts Festival at the end of last September with Praspar Press for their presentation of Scintillas, New Maltese Writing, and the Malta Book Festival last November to present Merlin Publishers' new titles in their Rumanzini series for young readers, and launch, also with Praspar Press, the English translation of my short story collection what will it take for me to leave. Now I am looking forward to the mini-book fest organised by Kixott between 29th April and 1st May 2022 to launch my new novel Marta Marta, which deals with feminism and gender issues."