Núria Añó
NÚRIA AÑÓ (Lleida, 1973) is a Catalan/Spanish writer, translator, and speaker at international conferences, where she usually talks about literary creation, the cinema, cities or authors such as Elfriede Jelinek, Patricia Highsmith, Salka Viertel, Alexandre Dumas fils, Franz Werfel or Karen Blixen. She has presented her work at the following universities and institutions: Lleida University (UdL), Tunis University, Jaén University (UJA), The International University of Andalucía (UNIA), The High Council for Scientific Investigation (CSIC-Madrid), The Sysmän Kirjasto Library in Finland, Shanghai Writers’ Association (SWA), Fudan University in China, The East China Normal University, Sinan Mansion, The Cervantes Institute in Shanghai, the Conrad Festival in Poland, the Massolit Bookshop, Bar Baza and the Cervantes Institute in Krakow along with other libraries and secondary or higher education establishments. She is also a member of various jury panels at international competitions.
Some of her works, including novels, short stories, and essays, have been published and translated into Spanish, French, English, Italian, German, Polish, Chinese, Latvian, Portuguese, Dutch, Greek, Arabic, and Romanian.
Her first published novel, Els nens de l’Elisa (Omicron, 2006) was awarded third prize in the 24th Ramon Llull Novel Award, one of the most prestigious awards for Catalan literature, awarded by Editorial Planeta. L’escriptora morta ([The Dead Writer, 2020] Omicron) was published in 2008; Núvols baixos ([Lowering Clouds, 2020] Omicron) in 2009; La mirada del fill (Abadia) in 2012; El salón de los artistas exiliados en California ([The Salon of Exiled Artists in California], 2020) is a biography of screenwriter Salka Viertel.
Núria won the 18th Joan Fuster Prize for Fiction Ciutat d’Almenara, fourth place for international writing at the 2018 Shanghai Get-Together, and has been awarded with prestigious international grants: Nuoren Voiman Liitto (Finland, 2016), Shanghai Writing Program (China, 2016), Baltic Centre (Sweden, 2017), IWTCR (Greece, 2017), Krakow UNESCO City of Literature (Poland, 2018), IWTH (Latvia, 2019 and 2023) and IWP (China, 2020).
Her writing centers around her characters’ psychology, often through the use of anti-heroes. Núria’s characters are the focus of her work, and are generally more relevant than the topic itself. With introspective reflections that are feminine rather than sentimental, she finds a unique balance between the marginal worlds of parallels. Her novels explore a wide variety of topics, delving into important social and current themes, such as injustice or lack of communication between individuals. The basic plot of her novels does not tell you everything there is to know. By using this method, Añó seeks to involve the reader so they ask their own questions to discover the deeper meaning of the content.
