Coloma Lleal (Ceuta, 1944) is a poet, fiction writer and professor of Philology at the University of Barcelona.

In 1965, she was awarded the Golden Englantine prize in the Jocs Florals literary competition (held in Paris) for her collection of poems Plany a quatre veus (Lament in Four Voices), after which she published the collections Poemes (Poems, 1967), Des dels sons (On Those of the Sounds, 1987) and Com si fos una elegia (As If It Were an Elegy, 2001). Her poems have been translated into French, Spanish and Russian and have also appeared in anthologies such as Antología poética de la lengua catalana (puesta en versos castellanos) (Anthology of Poetry in the Catalan Language (Turned into Spanish Poems, 1965) and Poesia Catalana de la Guerra d'Espanya i de la Resistència (Catalan Poetry of the Spanish War and Resistance, 1969).

With her book L'embat del vent. Records d'una vida marinera (The Blowing of the Wind: Memories of a Seagoing Life, 2009), she was a finalist in the 11th Romà Planas Prize for Popular Memoirs. She also writes articles and accessible books on Catalan linguistics, such as Joglar (Minstrel, 1981) and Atzavara (Agave, 1983), as well as works on the history of the Romance languages, for example Breu història de la llengua catalana (A Brief History of the Catalan Language, 2003) and El judezmo: el dialecto sefardí y su historia (Judezmo: The Sephardic Dialect and its History, 1992).

Coloma Lleal has also worked with plastic artists such as the painter Josep Uclés and the sculptor Camí.

She is an honorary member of AELC (Association of Catalan Language Writers).


Web page: Toni Terrades Oliver for AELC.
Documentation: Coloma Lleal and Toni Terrades.
Photographs: Author's personal files.
Translation: Julie Wark.