Alegria Julià (Barcelona, 1945) is a teacher and, although retired, she continues to visit schools to work with school library related themes in particular. She also worked as a consultant to the Catalan Language Teaching Service of the Catalan Autonomous Government for four years.

Since 1991, when she published her first book Un romà al segle XX (A Roman in the Twentieth Century), she has been visiting primary and secondary schools to organise readers' forums. She enjoys this contact with school children and her main aim is to convey to them the pleasure of reading and writing. She encourages them to read and urges them to jot down their ideas, fantasies, anecdotes, and so on, and to write the stories that occur to them.

Her own stories are based on real events mixed with a touch of imagination, a dash of humour and a pinch of tenderness. She greatly enjoys wordplay, with both form and meaning. Sometimes her stories entail counting and recounting, or a game of joining monosyllables until they construct a story, or writing the narrative vertically and then finishing it horizontally, thus achieving a well-rounded tale.

Her book Un romà al segle XX has been followed by Contes de festa major (1995), De cop i volta (1996), Gent de mar (1997), Contes numèrics una mica histèrics (2001), Contes verticals (2008), Contalles i rialles d'arreu del món (2011) and Contes enigmístics (2018)



Web page: Alegria Julià and Josep Miàs for AELC.
Documentation and photographs from the author's personal files.
Translation: Julie Wark.