Meet WIPO's first IP Youth Ambassador: Santiago Mena López

• Author: Natalie Humsi
• Position: WIPO Academy

What prompted you to start writing?

I started writing because of a strong desire to share my perception of the world through the ideas and stories that are developing in my mind. I also want to encourage young people like me to read more.

Where do you get your creative ideas?

The things I see and experience in my daily life inspire me. I get my creative ideas from the news, people’s stories and conversations with family and friends. My stories always have a message. Either I build the storyline around that message or the message emerges from the storyline.

Tell us about Encogidos. What inspired you to write it?

In writing my first novel, Encogidos, I drew inspiration from stories I came across in the novels I read and the TV series and films I watched. That’s how the idea of creating a novella with a science fiction slant started to take shape. I wanted to create a storyline where a range of distinctive characters break stereotypes and enrich their personalities.

Literature is a time vault. Books, short stories, novellas and poems are where we store the experiences and thoughts that we consider valuable and worthy of preservation.

Encogidos is about a socially-awkward and nerdy young boy named Lucas who is bullied at school by a group of fellow students. In an attempt to stand up to them, he sets about creating a chemical formula to make himself bigger and stronger than his peers. But his experiment goes wrong and he ends up shrinking both the bullies and himself. The story recounts their experiences of life when just 2 millimeters tall and how they overcame their differences and put their heads together to find a way to return to their normal size.

What do books represent for you?

Literature is a time vault. Books, short stories, novellas and poems are where we store the experiences and thoughts we consider valuable and worthy of preservation. In writing them down, we turn them into a source of knowledge for all those who seek to be captivated by them and the beautiful language used to express them. A book offers a gateway into the mind of the author, a bridge to another time. Reading is a wonderful way to acquire knowledge and explore experiences that took years to collect, in a matter of hours. As the saying goes, “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies… The man who never reads lives only one.”

What does creativity mean to you and why do you think it is important?

For me, creativity is humanity’s way of taking previous...