Skip to main content
Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women's Writing (CCWW)

Concha García

Concha García’s substantial body of work and literary career has gained her recognition as one of the most significant voices in Spanish contemporary women’s poetry. She has published extensively in different genres, including poetry, literary criticism and journal writing, and her books have been translated into English, Italian, Chinese, Arabic and Portuguese.

Born in La Rambla (Córdoba, Spain) in 1956, Concha García has spent most of her life in Barcelona where she studied Hispanic Philology and developed her writing career. In 2021 she returned to her native Córdoba where she currently lives and writes. She has taught at the Escuela de Escritura Ateneu Barcelonès, the Laboratorio de Escritura and the Escuela de Letras in Madrid. She has also been a visiting speaker at the Universidad de la República (Montevideo), Viedma and Comodoro Rivadavia (Patagonia), as well as at Wake Forest University (North Carolina), and Austin (Texas), Pomona (Los Ángeles), Columbia (New York), Aston University (Birmingham), Leeds University, and the Università degli Studi (Florence). She was an executive member of the Asociación Colegial de Escritores de Cataluña, ACEC, and co-director of the literary magazine Ficciones. At present Concha García is coordinator of the collection 'La hora de la estrella' (Cántico Editorial) and teaches the online course 'Miradas en los entresijos. Poesía escrita por mujeres en el siglo XX'.

Concha Garcia.png
Concha García (c) the author.

In addition to her poetry collections, her poems have been published in literary journals such as Ínsula, Revista de la Universidad de México, Taifa, Zurgai y Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos. They have also been included in anthologies such as Conversaciones y poemas. La nueva poesía femenina española en castellano by Sharon Keefe Ugalde (1991); Ellas tienen la palabra. Dos décadas de poesía española by Noni Benegas and Jesús Munárriz (1997); De lo imposible a lo verdadero, poesía española, 1965-2000 by Antonio Garrido Moraga (2000); Poesia espanhola de agora by Joaquín Manuel Magalhaes (1997); Antologia della poesía spagnola dal 1961 ad oggi by Rosa Gómez Rossi and Valentı́ Oliver (1996) and Sette poeti spagnoli d’oggi , translated into Italian by Emilio Coco (2001).

Her essays on poetry have been published in Avui, and in ABC Cultural. Concha García is the recipient of national literary awards such as the Premio Gil de Biedma (1994), Premio Aula Negra Universidad de León (1987) and Primer Premio de Poesía Barcarola (1988). Her book of poems, Acontecimiento (2008), was a finalist in the prestigious Ausias March Prize as was her 2016 collection, Las Proximidades in the Premio de la Crítica. In July 2019, she received the Dama de Baza award for her outstanding record as a writer and, in March 2023, she was awarded the Premio Igualdad by the Provincial Council of Córdoba for her continuing advocacy and support for women’s poetry.

Concha García’s powerful and inclusive feminist poetry does not conform to established canons. It emerges as a very personal voice (in her own words: 'un sujeto poético radicalmente solitario'), with an invented poetic language that captures women’s multifaceted everyday reality, as well as their inner desires and anxieties: 'La poesía no es un sonido, ni un ritmo, ni una serie de palabras que nos cuentan una historia […] La poesía se percibe con los sentidos. En mi poesía la mirada ocupa un espacio significativo' (Interview by Martínez Lapuente, 2019). 

Her most recent work, Bajo la luz de la lámpara (2023), a collection of articles and interviews with Spanish and Latin American women writers, including Ida Vitale, Juana Castro, Selva Casal, Rosa Lentini, Olga Orozco, presents a selection of her critical work dating from 1989 to 2023, while showcasing 20th- and 21st- century women poets across the Spanish-speaking world. An avid traveller in Latin America and the USA, her volumes Antología de poesía de la Patagonia (2006) and La Frontera Móvil (2015) illustrate the bonds she developed with fellow women writers from Ecuador, Mexico, Argentina and Uruguay and gives visibility to Patagonian women poets, taken further through her collaboration with filmmaker Barbara Meyer in the documentary Entre dos orillas. Poetas del Río de la Plata (2015).

Compiled by Matilde Gallardo (London)