Most important writers in Catalan Language. This a part of lletrA project devoted to Catalan Literature Online. More information: http://lletra.uoc.edu / email: lletra@uoc.edu
Created by CatalanLiterature on Sep 19, 2009
Last updated: 01/30/12 at 12:30 PM
Tags: catalan literature writers Catalonia Catalan
Catalan Literature has no followers yet. Be the first one to follow.
Toni Sala (Sant Feliu de Guíxols, 1969) is a teacher of Catalan literature. This professional experience led to the non-fiction essay Petita crònica d'un professor a secundària (Small Chronicle of a Secondary School Teacher) (2001), one of the best-selling and most controversial books of the decade, in which Toni Sala exposes the frustration prevalent among educators today with disarming sincerity and raw candour.
Indebted to poets like Kavafis and Yehuda Amichai, the latter of whom he has translated, he frequently presents historical or cultural motifs from Antiquity, which contrast with the vulgarity of the present. A further contrast is between the pervasive erudition of his poems and his simplicity of tone and forms. Love and nostalgia for a glorious past are the two great themes in Forcano's poetry. He has received many prizes for his poetic work. More...
Jordi Puntí (Manlleu, 1967) has translated Paul Auster, Amélie Nothomb and Daniel Pennac, among others. He is currently the editor of the literary supplement, Quadern, published by the newspaper El País. Jordi Puntí has received public and critical acclaim and is considered one of the most promising new voices of contemporary Catalan literature. More...
Empar Moliner (Barcelona, 1966), once an actress, is currently a very popular journalist who contributes to El País, Catalunya Ràdio and even late-night television talk shows. Her journalistic chronicles, written with the same corrosive style of her short stories, have been recently collected in an anthology, which has also been a success with both critics and readers. More
Albert Sánchez Piñol (Barcelona, 1965) is an anthropologist who specializes in Africa. His first novel, Cold Skin, was a literary and publishing phenomenon. It has been translated into twenty-two languages in twenty-four different countries. He has also published various short stories as well as a satirical non-fiction essay about the nature of dictatorship. More...
Joan-Lluís Lluís (Perpignan, 1963), journalist and novelist, is one of the most notable writers in French Catalonia. His oeuvre, written exclusively in Catalan, is a unique and remarkable voice of new Catalan fiction. The Day of the Bear was awarded the prestigious Joan Crexells Prize in 2005. More...
Cunillé is one of the most singular voices in Catalan theatre today. The characters in her plays meet and establish relationships totally by chance. They are solitary souls who are usually lost in the great desert of the modern world, seeking an arm to cling to so that they may be saved. Hence, despite the pessimism conveyed by her texts, the characters also try to keep struggling to escape the harsh situation in which they are immersed. Her plays avoid moments of high drama to focus instead on the small, everyday situations that, in fact, constitute the characters' moments of greatest truth. Cunillé is also the author of some of the best works of cabaret in Catalan theatre. More...
David Castillo is a journalist, critic, novelist and poet. From his youth he has been a tireless cultural activist and hence has brought together a range of alternative groups organising and directing poetry festivals while also working as director of cultural supplements in the mainstream press. His poetic and novelistic works are characterised by a spareness of form, relentless sincerity, rock motifs and Barcelona settings.
Eduard Márquez (Barcelona, 1960) has written books of poetry, collections of short stories and novels for children and adults. His early commitment to poetry (La travesía innecesaria [The Unnecessary Crossing], 1991) and Antes de la nieve [Before the Snow] (1994), both works written in Spanish) has marked his particular way of understanding literature: a poetics of "less is more". More...
Sergi Pàmies was born in Paris in 1960. Until he was eleven years old he lived in the immigrant neighbourhood of Gennevilliers. For ten years, between 1979 and 1989, he worked as an accountant leading a double life as a writer. Then, three years after publishing his first book, he joined the "prostituted profession of the media". Since then he has been caught up in the wheels within wheels of the machinery that has set apart some of the most potent myths among those that retain us and those that entertain us, for example, television or football. More...
Imma Monsó (LLeida, 1959) has published four novels to great critical and public acclaim: No se sap mai (One Never Knows), which was immediately translated into Spanish and was winner of the Tigre Juan Prize for the best first novel to be published in Spain, Com unes vacances (Like a Holiday) and Tot un caràcter (A Total Character), while her last novel, Millor que no m'ho expliquis (Better Don't Tell Me), was runner-up for the prestigious Llibreter Prize awarded by the Bookseller's Association of Catalonia. More...
Lluís-Anton Baulenas was born in 1958 in Barcelona. He has a degree in Catalan Philology. He has been a theatre director and, among other plays, he directed El gran màgic d’Oz (‘The Great Wizard of Oz’). At present he is a critic, translator and novelist. Lately, he has also written screenplays for the films Anita no perd el tren (Anita Doesn’t Miss the Train) and Amor idiota (Idiot Love) by the Catalan director Ventura Pons. More...
Enric Sòria (Oliva, 1958), has a degree in History and, at an early age, began to work as a journalist with the magazine El temps. Although he later started to work as a linguistic corrector with the Diputació de València (Provincial Council of Valencia), he never stopped writing for the press. In 1997 he moved to live in Barcelona, where he works as coordinator of the Opinion section of the newspaper Avui. He presently teaches Journalism at the Blanquerna Faculty of Communication of the Ramon Llull University. More...
Benet Martorell was the first person to put a paintbrush between Perejaume’s fingers. At the end of his life, Martorell talked about nothing else but the painter Raurich. Perejaume was infatuated with old Martorell just as old Martorell had been with the painter Raurich. More...
Ponç Pons defines his poetry as classical in its rhythm, modern in its expression and forceful in its content. In other words, firstly, Ponç Pons only writes poems that respect metrics, with a rhythm that is pleasing to the ear when they are read. Secondly, he uses a literary language that, while cultured in its register, also reflects the present-day use of Minorcan. Finally, he does not coneive of poetry as a simple rhetorical or formal word game but rather believes that the poem must always have something to say and that what is to be conveyed must be powerfully conveyed. More...
Anna Montero is from Valencia, both by origin and adoption. Montero's poetry is an inquiry into silence, in which she reveals the impossibility of capturing the instant beyond one's own verbal experience, which is the poem itself. With a minimal use of elements her poetry is maximally suggestive, for in the silence we intuit the presence of lost voices and in absence we comprehend the futility of the fact that what was once present for us now occupies a void. More...
Mercè Ibarz (Saidí, 1954) is author, journalist and cultural critic. She has published works of fiction and biographies and writes regularly on art and photography for the newspaper La Vanguardia. A la ciutat en obres by Mercè Ibarz appears to be, within her writing as a whole, the prelude to new music, both in the variety of themes and the registers it presents and in its revealing a new direction within the author's literary evolution. More...
Might we distinguish between prose and poetry in Palol? The answer is yes, in a descriptive sense, but not so much if we take into account two basic aspects of his literary world. First, El sol i la mort [The Sun and Death] formally raises the quest for a kind of poetry that I would venture to call syntagma. By this I mean to say that the construction of the verse is not centred so much on its syllabic distribution as on the disposition of the syntagmas of his sentences. More
Ivars d'Urgell, 1952 - Barcelona, 1998. Poet, novelist, translator and essayist. She completed her secondary schooling in Lleida and studied Classical Philology at the University of Barcelona where she soon came to know other young poets (Ramon Pinyol, Xavier Bru de Sala and, later, Miquel Desclot, Jaume Medina...) with whom she would found the publishing venture "Llibres del Mall" in 1973. More...
Quim Monzó (Barcelona, 1952) is not just a writer of fiction but also one of the most popular columnists in Catalonia. His journalistic work has been published in various anthologies. Vuitanta-sis contes (Eighty-Six Stories) has been honoured with extensive critical acclaim and prizes and has been translated into Spanish by the prestigious Spanish novelist, Javier Cercas. His work can be read in over fifteen languages. More...
So let's start with the philosophical question of who I am. I am me and my circumstance. You are too, I know, but now, I'm told, I have to talk about me. The truth is that, in this life, I could have been anything but a writer or, better said, novelist, because I don't regard myself as a writer. More...
A poet who has taken his inspiration from traditional sources, Enric Casassas blends elements of folklore and present-day pop culture in his work (with clear sympathies for the underground and counterculture movements). His poetry reveals very heterogeneous influences (from medieval, Renaissance, Baroque through to avant-garde poetry), while experimenting with new forms or satirically reworking traditional genres. More...
Maria Barbal (Tremp, 1949). Born in the region of Pallars Jussà, she moved to Barcelona in the mid-sixties –in what she calls "a cultural migration"– and graduated with an Arts degree from the University of Barcelona. She first became known as a writer with Pedra de tartera (Mountain Scree - 1984), which won the Joaquim Ruyra prize in 1984, among other major awards. Her other works include Càmfora (Camphor - 1992) winner of the National Catalan Literature Prize 1993, awarded by the Catalan government, Carrer Bolívia (Bolívia Street - 2000), Bella edat (Beautiful Age - 2003) and País íntim (Intimate Country - 2005). More...
Carme Riera (Palma de Mallorca, 1948) is a lecturer in Spanish literature at the Universitat Autònoma (Autonomous University) in Barcelona. Her work has been translated into many languages. Some outstanding titles are Dins el darrer blau (In the Last Blue) (1994) and Cap el cel obert (Towards the Open Sky), which are both historical novels about Conversos (Converted Jews) in Mallorca. La meitat de l'ànima (Half the Soul) was awarded the distinguished Sant Jordi (Saint George) Prize for the novel in 2003. More...
As Professor of Modern and Contemporary Spanish Literature at the University of Lleida, Jaume Pont (Lleida, 1947) has focused his research in two areas: twentieth-century poetry, especially postism and Carlos Edmundo de Ory, and Antonio Ros de Olano and nineteenth-century fantastic narrative. His work as a literary critic has also been a constant, his pieces appearing in a range of reviews and newspapers, for example Destino, Ínsula, La Vanguardia, Avui, among others. More...
Telloc, 21 November 1995, My very dear and beloved soul-mate P-M, I have toiled long before reaching this point. A few days and nights ago, or a couple (in the Mallorcan sense), I was trying to thread together a few strings of words to respond to questions you are putting to me almost without knowing you're doing it and that put me on edge because I don't know how to answer them. More...
Jaume Cabré (Barcelona 1947) is one of most widely read writers of contemporary Catalan literature. He is the author of an extensive body of work that includes fiction, television screenplays and theatre. His writings have been translated into many languages. Senyoria (His Excellency) won the Méditerranée prize (2004) and Les veus del Pamano (Voices from the River) won the National Critics'Prize.
Montserrat Roig (Barcelona, 1946 - 1991) began to be respected as a writer at a very early age, as a result of the publication of her first novel, Molta roba i poc sabó (A Lot of Washing and Not Much Soap). Her next novels confirmed and intensified this prestige. An Arts graduate, in Philosophy and Arts, Montserrat Roig showed that she was also a magnificent author in the prose of ideas, both historical and journalistic. She worked with various periodical publications and also television. Various major prizes, such as the Victor Català Award (1971), the Saint George’s Award (1976) and the Serra d’Or Critics Award (1977) represent important milestones in a brilliant career as a fiction writer and essayist, cut short in 1991 by her premature death.
Pere Gimferrer (Barcelona, 1945) has long been one of the most prestigious Catalan writers. His poetic work has been distinguished with the most prestigious Catalan and Spanish awards. His considerable body of, extremely high quality translation work includes an impressive list of European classics in English and French. As a literary and art critic, his exquisite taste has been reflected in numerous articles and in monographs on Foix, Max Ernst, Tàpies, Miró, etc. He is a member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Language and of the Royal Academy of Belles Lletres of Barcelona. More...
Francesc Parcerisas' poetry is mainly collected in the volume Triomf del present (Triumph of the Present: Poems (1965-1983)), which represents one of the most wide-ranging and yet consistent contributions of his generation to the panorama of contemporary Catalan literature. His poetry, with its clear affinities with the Anglo-Saxon tradition, started out as being linked with the realism that was dominant in a good part of the poetic scene of the 1960s, for example Vint poemes civils (Twenty Civil Poems) and Homes que es banyen (Men Bathing). More...
Julià de Jòdar first became known in 1997 with The Angel of the Second Death, the first volume of a trilogy entitled Fate and the Shadows, which received wide critical acclaim and was awarded the Premi Ciutat de Barcelona ("City of Barcelona Prize"). The Man who Loved Natàlia Vidal won the distinguished Prudenci Bertrana Prize in 2003. More...
Narcís Comadira studied Humanities and Philosophy at the Seminary of his home city of Girona and at the Monastery of Montserrat, after which he began to study Architecture and Romance Philology, to end up with a degree in History of Art. From 1971 to 1973 he was a language tutor at the University of London. Apart from poetry and painting, he has also worked in other disciplines, for example as a playwright, translator, newspaper commentator, literary critic and author of studies in the fields of art, architecture and advertising. Some of his articles that have appeared in the “Quadern” – culture supplement of the newspaper El País – have been collected in the book Sense escut (With No Shield - 1998). More...
Jesús Moncada (Mequinensa, 1941 - Barcelona, 2005) is the author of an extensive body of work that has been rewarded with numerous prizes and widespread critical acclaim. Moncada was a master of both the genres of the short story and the novel. His work has been translated into over fifteen different languages. More...
In different attempts to take in Marta Pessarrodona's poetic oeuvre as a whole, the response of one of the first readers of this poet from the Vallès region (and doubtless one of the most discerning she will ever have) is frequently invoked. In the Prologue to Setembre 30 [September 30], the book with which she made her official debut into Catalan literary circles, Gabriel Ferrater was of the view that the contents of this poetry were "judicious" and that they excelled in the craft of "sincerity, in an apposite and moderately modulated tone of voice". More...
I was born on 7th February 1940 and, on the 14th of the same month twelve years later, my mother decided to make me an orphan. I don't know if she did it out of revenge or was simply moved by some instinct of imitation. The fact is that, four months before this, I'd got away from home, making the most of the occasion when my father, a most god-fearing man, had arranged to hand me over to a sect of pious rustic barons who were still full of ardour after winning the war. More...
Josep M. Benet i Jornet is one of Catalonia's leading playwrights. He has written more than forty plays since 1964. He is also a television scriptwriter. My grandfather Josep Benet was a humble farmer from Borges Blanques, one of those people who hung a picture of Macià at the head of the bed. Neither he nor his children read books or went to see plays. More...
Joan F. Mira (Valencia, 1939) is a writer, anthropologist and a lecturer in Greek and the Classics. He has published numerous essays and has translated the New Testament and the Divine Comedy, which received the National Translation Prize in 2001. Purgatori (Purgatory) won the Sant Jordi Prize in 2002, the highest honour in Catalan Literature. More...
Xavier Rubert de Ventós divides his time between philosophical reflection and his commitment to active politics. He is a professor of aesthetics at the Barcelona School of Architecture. He has also been Visiting professor at Berkeley and Santayana Fellow at Harvard, in addition to being a founding member of the New York Institute for the Humanities. As a politician, he has been a member of the Spanish Parliament and of the European Parliament. His prolific and multiform philosophical creation is critical and heterodox. More
Baltasar Porcel (Andratx, 1938 - Barcelona, 2009) is one of the Catalan writers that has received the most international acclaim and is an irreplaceable figure of contemporary Catalan literature. Translated into many languages, his works have been awarded prizes in Italy (The Bocaccio Prize), France (The Meditérranée prize) and the United States (Critics' Choice). His creative output includes drama, non-fiction and journalism. For many years he has contributed a daily article to the newspaper La Vanguardia, which has become one of the most widely-read columns in the country. More...
Throughout its long and supple existence, Joan Margarit's poetry has kept acquiring more and more readers so that he has now become one of the most widely read Catalan poets in Catalonia and also in the rest of the Peninsula. His early works were written in Spanish but he would eventually switch to Catalan. More...
After a public reading of my poems in Girona, one member of the audience observed that my conception of the poem was often very theatrical, as if the surrounding realities constituted some kind of stage set. I'm not aware of this but the opinion amused me. There is a book of mine that is concerned with theatre. It's called Per Puck [For Puck], a title that refers to the mischievous imp of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, and it is dedicated to the students who took part in the workshop I ran on this play. More...
A Few Points to Clear the Way a Bit Poetry is not exclusive to anything or anyone. We might define it as a special way of seeing or perceiving reality. It can therefore be found in all the arts and in any personal experience (although it should not be confused with good feelings). More...
And why I write, I'm being asked. There are many reasons. And I should think the answer would have been different if I had been put this question during other stages in my life. At the beginning, during my early youth, for instance, I should think it was the challenge of finding out about, and exploring, one's own skills, and of making oneself known, in order to compare the image that you have of yourself with the image that the others have of you. Just the opposite of what I seek at this stage in my life. I would now say that I read and write in order to gather and sort a personal anthology of images taken from books, experiences, characters, scenes, sentences, words... that somehow have exerted a mesmerising power and hold a special meaning for all of us. More...
The biography of Miquel Martí i Pol (Roda de Ter, 1929 - Vic, 2003) has been marked by a number of defining features, amongst which the following are the most outstanding: a) his bond with his home town, where he has always lived; b) his condition as a worker and clerk at the La Blava textile factory in Roda de Ter where he was employed from the age of fourteen until he was forty-three; c) the consequences of the multiple sclerosis he contracted in about 1970, which has impeded normal movement and speech; d) his commitment to his social class and country; e) his willingness, since he was young, to question himself, to make an effort to know himself and the world around him.
Màrius Sampere was born in Barcelona on 28 December 1928 in carrer de la Igualtat (now called carrer de Cartagena) in the Guinardó neighbourhood. His father, Antoni Sampere Forns, was an office worker, as was his mother Adela Passarell Semper. Antoni Sampere was a tough, tenacious man, who was deeply attached to his country, while Adela Passarell was a sensitive, delicate and cultured woman. From 1929 to 1941 they were separated and during those years Màrius lived with his mother and his family. More...
Josep M. Espinàs (Barcelona, 1927) is one of the most popular writers of Catalan literature. Author of essays, books on walking trips and autobiographical works, he writes regularly for newspapers and magazines and is a frequent guest on radio and television programmes. More...
The work of Bonet (poetry and novel) is very much associated with light and colour. Light, as a metaphor of God, and colour, as the passions of light (Goethe): hence, poetry as the colour that gives character to life. Bonet once said that "my intention when I write is to illuminate those who read me". Bonet's work is also a meditation on God and human life, and offers a certain prophetic vision within the current of Christian existentialism. More...
Jordi Sarsanedas is a poet, fiction writer and translator. He has an Arts degree from the University of Toulouse (Languedoc) and has taught French language and literature in Barcelona. Between 1948 and 1950, he was a language tutor at Glasgow University, after which he went to live in Milan (1958-1961). Besides his work as a poet and fiction writer, he has also been a theatre director as well as being active in many other cultural initiatives. He was editor of the post-war review Ariel, a founder-member and director of the Agrupació Dramàtica de Barcelona [Barcelona Dramatic Society], president of the Catalan PEN Centre, and president of the Ateneu Barcelonès (1997-2003). In 1994 he was awarded the Catalan Letters Prize of Honour. More...
Vicent Andrés Estellés was born in Burjassot in 1924. The poetic production of Estellés is prolific and original. His importance derives from -among other elements- his having been able to create an extremely high-quality poetic opus. He is a vital and impassioned poet who offers admirable depictions of everyday existence. His subjects, consequently, are those of life itself: love, death, sex, fear, the city, the country, womanhood, and so on. More...
Joan Fuster was undoubtedly the most important Catalan essayist of the generations that emerged after the Civil War. The force of his intellectual personality and the breadth of his work — which expresses both a profound humanist view, undeniable political voluntarism, critical scepticism and corrosive humour — have gone beyond the literary ambit and have projected themselves into the cultural and civil life of the Països Catalans, making a major contribution towards the shaping of their unitary conscience. More...
Update Sources