M. Magdalena Gelabert i Miró (Manacor, 1964) is an essayist and poet. After obtaining a degree in Catalan Philology from the University of the Balearic Islands, she completed a master’s degree in “Catalan Language and Literature: Orality and Writing”, and a PhD with a thesis titled “The Figure of the Woman in Antoni M. Alcover’s Mallorcan Folk Tales”.

Since 2008, she has been a member of the Balearic Islands Ethnopoetics Research Group (GREIB) at the University of the Balearic Islands and, through the group for ethnopoetic studies, is a member of the Catalan Society for Language and Literature, which is an affiliate of the Institute for Catalan Studies. She is also a member of the International Association for Catalan Language and Literature, and of the Popular Culture of Mallorca Advisory Board.

In 2008, she received the Recognition of Merits Award from the Mallorcan Municipal School of Manacor and, in 2017, the Aina Moll Prize of Obra Cultural Balear, while in 2018 she was awarded the Antoni M. Alcover City of Manacor Essay Prize as well as the Manacor S’Agricola Cultural Association Prize.

As an essayist, she has published Breu història de la llengua catalana (2002) and Societat, llengua i comunicació a Manacor: el paper dels joves, (2003), which is co-authored with her brother Joan. She is also author of Estudi del Sermó de la Conquista de Mallorca d’Antoni M. Alcover (2008), and editor of the critical edition of Vetlada de Glosadors, by Antoni M. Alcover (2009) and of Alcover’s only novel, N’Arnau (2011). Moreover, she has published the essay La dona a les Rondalles Mallorquines d’Antoni M. Alcover (2018), winner of the City of Manacor Essay prize, and Antoni M. Alcover i les dones (2019), Mallorca Essay Prize.

She has published the poetry collections Dona sàpiens (2012), Essència de mare, which includes a poem set to music by Antoni Parera Fons and sung by Maria del Mar Bonet, A la ciutat (2019), and Quaranta cobles a la saviesa (2020), and her work has been included in several anthologies of poetry.

She is a member of the Associació d'Escriptors en Llengua Catalana (AELC – Association of Catalan language Writers).
 

Web page: Toni Terrades for AELC.
Documentation and photographs: Author’s personal files.
Translation: Julie Wark.