Joan Casas (L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, 1950) is a playwright, poet, fiction writer, translator and essayist.

Initially related with independent theatre groups in the 1970s and 1980s, his work covers several genres, although the dramatic arts have been at the core of his creative activity.

Besides his work as an actor and lecturer in the Institut del Teatre (Institute of Theatre of Barcelona), he has written several plays in which, although they experiment in the use of space and time, the word is the essential element. Notable among them are the prize-winning works Nus (Knot, 1991) and Nocturn corporal (Corporal Nocturne, 1994), as well as L'últim dia de la creació (The Last Day of Creation), which was premiered in Paris in 2006.

His prose works include a first book of short stories, Pols de terrat (Dust on the Terrace, 1980), winner of the Víctor Català Prize, and the diary Amb la terra a la cintura (Earth to My Waist, 2010), winner of the Rovira i Virgili Essay Prize. He has also received prizes for his poetry, for example the Miquel de Palol Prize of Girona for Tres quaderns (Three Notebooks, 1986) and the Ciutat de Palma (City of Palma) Prize for the collection Amb efecte (With Effect, 1987), which is co-authored with the poet Feliu Formosa. In 2005 he was awarded the Jordi Domènech Prize for Poetry Translation, for his version Tard, molt tard, de nit entrada (2005) of the work Late into the Night by the Greek poet Iannis Ritsos. He has translated many works into Catalan from other languages including Italian, Portuguese, Russian and, in particular, French. Moreover, he has written a great number of essays.

Some of his writings are as yet unpublished.



Web page: Francesc Viñas for AELC.
Translation: Julie Wark.
Documentation and photographs: author’s personal files.