"What grace and what freshness, what naturalness, in her stories!", he wrote in 1958, in Mercè Rodoreda, an almost nonagenarian Victor Catalan, the pseudonym under which Caterina Albert (l'Escala, 1869-1966) signed all her books. The author of Loneliness had been impressed by Twenty-two stories, which Rodoreda had published after a two-decade hiatus in publishing. "Too often, some who claim to write in Catalan use such a fantastical vocabulary and construction that, when I come across language as natural and authentic as yours, it feels like a major celebration," he insists. "How charming and fresh your stories are!" he said.

There are books that open like old wooden wardrobes, with creaking hinges, drawers where someone has left papers, fossils, yellowed letters, and drawings of whales made with squid ink. Anna Aguilar-Amat (1962) has written one of these books. Dead naturalists (Pagès, 2025), a delightful blend of genres that is simultaneously archive, initiatory journey, elegy, and homage to a naturalist legacy that lives both within and beyond the body.

Although he earned his doctorate at the University of Chicago, it was in Cambridge where Isaias Fanlo (Lleida, 1980) ultimately pursued his career as a professor. A cultural manager, translator, and author of numerous articles, he has also written the essay El llibre rosa de gais i lesbianes, which he published in Columna in 2004, when he was only 23 years old, had been working on his first novel for almost a decade, El pes de la boira [The weight of the fog], finally published by Pagès Editors. Set in an inland town crossed by the Segre River and named Rotunda—for its circularity but also for its extreme climate: "six months of winter and six of summer," says one of the characters—it narrates the "decisive months" in which young León loses his father, meets new friends, and becomes aware of his homosexual desire.

Glàfira Smith (Andrea Ferrando, Barcelona, ​​​​1973) worked as a director at Mediapro, directing series such as Veterinarians, documentaries such as The sewers of the Interior and international museum projects when he saw the announcement of the ARA comic contest in 2020, and decided to give it a try. The following year it received an honorable mention and in the third edition in was the brand new winnerThe impulse was so strong that she decided to hang up her cables and throw herself into the adventure of becoming an illustrator. She has just published her first graphic novel, a moving story about the relationship between a man and his dog, Truffle (Pagès Editors). One of the 15 best comics of 2024"I've gone from leading a team of more than 100 people to running my small project alone. I've heard a sense of terror about taking the plunge, but at the same time, it was a vital necessity, because time is running out now; it's now or never," Smith explains.