Antoni Moll Camps (Ciutadella, Menorca, 1926 - Campdevànol, Ripollès, 2023). Poet, fiction writer, translator, proofreader, and Latin teacher.

Grandson of the Menorcan folklorist Francesc Camps and son of the printer and bookseller Joan Moll, he studied at the Diocesan Seminary of Mallorca. After completing his ecclesiastical studies, he was a curate in Migjorn Gran and taught Latin in the seminary of Menorca. His first book, a collection of poems titled Serenor (1947), made his name as one of the island’s outstanding poets.

Between 1963 and 1970, he worked as a priest, mainly in Santiago de Chile and in Valparaíso, until obtaining an ecclesiastical dispensation and marrying. After 1972 he resided in Barcelona with his family, and worked as a proofreader for the publishing house Salvat, and as a translator of children’s and young people’s literature. Then, embarking more actively on his literary career he published his prize-winning memoirs Inventari de minyonia. Evocacions i digressions (1986), which was followed by his second book of poems Finestra dels dies (1989).

He wrote for Menorcan newspapers and magazines where he published some of his poems, in addition to translating, and writing stories and novels including Lluna d’octubre (1996) and La noia que sortí del mirall (2007). In 2009 he published his translation into Catalan of The Odes: Book I by Horace and, in 2010, he was named Ciutadel·la Citizen of the Year, in the category of Bronze Flageolet.

He was an Honorary member of the Associació d’Escriptors en Llengua Catalana (AELC – Association of Catalan Language Writers).

Web page: Francesc Viñas for AELC.
Documentation and photographs: Family files.
Cover photograph: © Marta Dalmau.
Translation: Julie Wark.