Biel Mesquida

Writer (Castelló de la Plana, 1947)

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Mesquida lived in Manacor in his childhood and adolescence. It was then that he realized that what he most liked to do was stay in his room and read, write and listen to records, rather than meet up with the other boys to play football.

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After publishing his first texts in a school magazine, Biel moved to Barcelona where he studied Biology and Information Science. In 1975 he shook up Catalan literature with the publication of an experimental and irreverent novel titled L’adolescent de sal. This groundbreaking book, which is mainly about the search for identity, had won the Prudenci Bertrana prize in 1973, but took a year and a half to be published due to the problems it had with Francoist censorship.

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Since then, settled again in Mallorca, Biel Mesquida has done translations, scripts for television and films, and has published numerous books. These include the novels Excelsior o el temps escrit (Premio Ciutat de Barcelona), Doi, Puta Marès and Vertígens; the collections of short stories T’estim a tu, Els detalls del món (Premi Nacional de Literatura de la Generalitat de Catalunya 2006) and Acrollam; and the poetry books El bell país on els homes desitgen els homes and Paraula de poeta.

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He also writes a blog – Plagueta de Bord – is a lecturer at the Universitat de les Illes Balears, director of the Mediterranean Poetry Festival and is a habitual collaborator in newspapers like Diario de Mallorca and El País, where he always attempts a creative, free form of journalism, disregarding genres.