La forja de una escritora: los cinco inviernos de Olga Merino en Rusia

This article offers a study of Spanish writer Olga Merino’s (1965) autobiographical work, Cinco inviernos (Five Winters, 2022), which is an adaptation of the ‘Russian notebooks’ that she wrote during her time as a correspondent in Moscow (1993‑98). Russia stands as a geographical and emotional space for the young journalist to acquire knowledge, and the notebooks emerge as Merino’s physical representation of her own formation as a writer. Merino captures her life experiences, reflects on political issues, rewrites her critical comments on literature, as well as on other disciplines and arts (e.g. journalism, linguistics, translation, music, cinema), and discusses the strategies she adopts to write. Her five winters in Russia manifest themselves as a process of self‑learning that would initiate her into the writing of her first novel (Cenizas rojas [Red Ashes], 1999) and the development of other stories.