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Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women's Writing (CCWW)

Laura Freixas

Laura Freixas 2017 GoboFR WikiC CC BY-SA 4.0.jpg
Laura Freixas (GoboFR, 2017; via WIkimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0)

Laura Freixas was born on 16 July 1958 in Barcelona, where she spent her childhood 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 then 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 taking up writing full time, Freixas worked as a publisher, translator, editor and literary critic. After her first job with literary agent Carmen Balcells (1981-1983) she travelled to the UK to work as an 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, Günter 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, Rainer Maria 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. Among others she has translated Virginia Woolf’s and André Gide’s diaries and Madame de Sévigné’s letters.  She worked as a literary critic for El País (1995-2000) and La Vanguadia’s cultural supplement, and edited a special edition of the Revista de Occidente (No. 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).

Apart from her novels, she has written two books of essays, Literatura y mujeres (2000), in which she analyses the situation of Spanish women authors in Spain and La novela femenil y sus lectrices (2009), in which she studies the devaluation of women and the feminine in literature. This book won her the Leonor de Guzman Prize in 2008.

Compiled by Maria-José Blanco (London)