Laura Freixas

Laura Freixas was born on 16th July 1958 in Barcelona. Her childhood was spent there with her parents and her brother. As many Catalans, Freixas was brought up with both Catalan and Spanish at home. She went to school at the French Lycée and went on to University to study Law (1975-80). She wrote her dissertation on Alejandra Kolontai, a revolutionary Russian feminist, before going on to study at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris (1980-81).

Before she became a full time author, she had many occupations in the publishing world: publisher, translator, editor and literary critic.
After her first job with literary agent Carmen Balcells (1981-1983) she travelled to the United Kingdom to work as assistant teacher in Bradford (1983-84) and Southampton (1984-85). In 1987 she founded, as part of Editorial Grijalbo, the collection El espejo de tinta which she directed until 1994. She published collections of short stories by Clarice Lispector, Gunter Kunert and Tatiana Tolstoi, novels by Chiyo Uno and Jean Rhys, Joe Orton’s diary, Paul Bowles’ autobiography as well as the letters of Sylvia Plath, Boris Pasternak, Rilke, Marina Tsvietáieva and others. Freixas was the first to edit Amos Oz and Elfriede Jelinek in Spanish.

Freixas still works as translator from French and English into Spanish. Amongst others she has translated Virginia Woolf’s and André Gide’s Diaries and Madame de Sévigné’s letters.  She has worked as a literary critic for El País (1995-2000) and La Vanguadia’s cultural supplement and has edited a special edition of the Revista de Occidente (num. 182-183, July- August 1996) dedicated to the intimate diary. Freixas has also edited some anthologies: Madres e hijas (1996) a collection of short stories by 20th-century Spanish women writers which has already reached its 14th edition; Hijas y padres (1999); Ser mujer (2000); Libro de las madres (2009) and Cuentos de amigas (2009).

Besides her novels she has written two books of essays Literatura y mujeres (2000) where she analyzes the situation of Spanish women authors in Spain and La novela femenil y sus lectrices (2009) where she studies the devaluation of women and the feminine in literature. With this book she won the Leonor de Guzman Prize in 2008.

This biography was put together by Maria-José Blanco - December 2009.

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