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Laura Freixas ( Barcelona , 1958) went to the French Lycée and did a BA in Law at Barcelona . She is the author of two collections of short stories (The Wrist Murderer , 1988, and Tales at the Age of Forty, 2001), a non-fiction work ( Women and Literature [in Spain ], 2000) and three novels: The Last Sunday in London (1997), Just Between Friends (1998) and Love or Whatever It Is (2005).
She has also worked as a foreign language assistant in two British Universities, a publisher, a literary critic for El País newspaper and a translator. She edited an anthology of short stories, Mothers and Daughters (1996). She is a weekly columnist for La Vanguardia newspaper.
Her latest work is the autobiography Adolescencia en Barcelona hacia 1970 (2007). .
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“Laura Freixas's is one of the most important voices in recent Spanish fiction. (…) A voice which is tenacious, interesting, intelligent, true to her creative principles, demanding.…” (Pilar Castro, El Mundo)
Laura Freixas was born in Barcelona in 1958 . She completed her secondary education at the French School in Madrid . She then took a degree in Law at the University of Barcelona (1975-1980) and wrote her dissertation on the Russian feminist and revolutionary Alexandra Kolontai. She furthered her studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales of Paris (1980-81).
She worked for the Carmen Balcells literary agency (1981-83), was a foreign language assistant at the British Universities of Bradford (1983-84) and Southampton (1984-85) and an editor . In 1987 she founded the literary series El espejo de tinta (The Ink Mirror) at the Spanish publishing house Grijalbo.
She was in charge of that until 1994. There she published, among other texts, short stories by Clarice Lispector, Gunter Kunert and Tatiana Tolstoi, novels by Amos Oz, Chiyo Uno and Jean Rhys, the autobiography of Paul Bowles, the diary of Joe Orton, letters by Sylvia Plath, Boris Pasternak, Rainer M. Rilke, and Marina Tsvetaieva. She was the first to publish Elfriede Jelinek in Spanish.
She has taught creative writing at the International Writers´ Circle , the Librería de Mujeres (The Women's Bookstore in Madrid ) and at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid .
She has translated numerous books from French and English into Spanish, such as the diaries of Virginia Woolf and André Gide and the letters of Madame de Sévigné.
She was a literary critic for El País , Spain 's biggest newspaper (1995-2000). She directed the special issue of Revista de Occidente devoted to diaries and journals (July-August 1996).
She compiled the anthology Madres e hijas (Mothers and Daughters, Anagrama ,1996 ), a collection of short stories by 20th-century Spanish women writers, which has already reached its 14 th edition, and been translated into Greek (Patakis), Italian (Passigli) and Korean.
She is now a columnist for La Vanguardia, one of the most important newspapers in Spain. Her articles may be read online (every second Thursday in www.lavanguardia.es)." .
She has given lectures at many universities of Spain , Great Britain , the United States and other countries.
Her first published book was a collection of semi-fantastic short stories, El asesino en la muñeca ( The Wrist Murderer , Anagrama, 1988) , of which the critics said:
“A new narrative voice is born, mature and accomplished. With debuts such as this one, now we can really start to believe in the boom of young Spanish fiction.”
Juanjo Fernández , Diari de Barcelona
“The ten short stories of The Wrist Murderer , first book of the Barcelona-born writer Laura Freixas , weave a delightful plot –a happy combination of freedom and rigor- that ends by becoming a monstrous spider's web.”
Juan Antonio Masoliver Ródenas , La Vanguardia
Then came an epistolary novel, Último domingo en Londres ( The Last Sunday in London , Plaza & Janés, 1997 ) that interweaves the voices of several characters, British and Spanish: a university teacher, one of his students who is also his lover, and other students who, having just completed a degree, face adult life for the first time.
“The Last Sunday in London is a novel written with an artistic prose and a deeply felt emotion that expresses at the same time a searing pessimism and an exulting jubilation. Apart from the different scenes and the various conflicts, the voice we hear is the unmistakable voice of Laura Freixas , nourished by a disquieting and fruitful solitude.”
Juan Antonio Masoliver Ródenas , La Vanguardia
“The novel is a combination of texts that are irresistible because of the transparency and freshness of a style in which what is seen is not the prose but the poetry. Poetry of anxiety, of rage, of desolation.”
Pilar Castro , ABC
In her second novel, Entre amigas (Just Between Friends , Destino, 1998), two women, one French, one Spanish, who had been pen-friends when they were teenagers in the first 1970s (the last years of Francoism), meet again fifteen years later. The novel consists of a long conversation in which both of them take stock of their lives so far (one of them is a painter, the other one left her job to take care of her children), revise their friendship and discover some secrets of their past.
“With confidence, clarity and economy, Freixas goes into the nuances of a story which is, to a large extent, the story of many of the Spaniards who are now between thirty-five and fifty. Freixas brings up many issues and leaves us, when all is said and done, with the suspicion that the losses of both the characters are probably the same loss, and that these two women who talk in Paris are debating, deep down, in the conscience of all of us.”
“The author uses a very direct style, with simple structures and vocabulary, for a detailed description of feelings, reminding us of the first works by Soledad Puértolas or Carmen Martín Gaite.”
“Laura Freixas reconstructs the evolution of two lives of the leftist generation, unearths –with a gift for suspense- the inevitable secrets of the past, and with a tone which is light but never frivolous, puts forward some basic existential questions about love, friendship, marriage, children, etc. A good reading.”
Sergio Vila-Sanjuán , La Vanguardia
The non-fiction book Literatura y mujeres (Women and Literature [in Spain], Destino, 2000 ) is a survey of the current situation of women writers in Spain . Is it true –as is often claimed by the media- that there as many as men? That they sell more than their male colleagues? That they win most of the prizes? And how are they treated by the media? And by the reviewers?
“At long last, here is a book for general readers that confronts a subject as reviled by some, as attractive for others, as is women and fiction. Questions such as: is there a literature that can be called feminine? Is it true that some critics see themselves as the bastion of literary values and therefore, impose their canon? Will the canon change when women enter the elite groups? Find an answer in this book. Laura Freixas confesses that she did not want to write it, but she has hit a raw nerve.”
“This book was necessary, much more so than we thought. Literature and women offers a lucid global vision of what is happening in our country around that thorny little question posed to every woman who sticks her nose into the literary world.”
María Ángeles Cabré , La Vanguardia
“ Laura Freixas ' book is enlightening, and the passion that comes to the surface in many pages does not detract from its clear-sightedness and truthfulness.”
Ricardo Senabre , El Mundo
Her following book, Cuentos a los cuarenta ( Tales at the Age of Forty , Destino, 2001), presents us –sometimes in a lightly fantastic way- with characters belonging to different generations, who face the dilemmas characteristic of adult life: choosing between reality and fantasy, or trying to combine them; accepting one's mediocrity; being scrupulously honest or submitting to the rules of the social game; confronting masculine and feminine conventional roles.
“There are some very good stories in this collection. Freixas has a direct style, which combines quite naturally narration and dialogue. Her stories display an attractive simplicity which will certainly attract many readers.”
Germán Gullón , ABC
Her latest novel, Amor o lo que sea ( Love or Whatever It Is , Destino, 2005) tells a story of love, idealization and disappointment and of intrigues surrounding a literary prize, in Barcelona during the early 1980s. The story is interwoven with reflections about aspects of the biographies of real people such as André Gide, Madame de Sévigné, La Bruyère , Lenin, Angelica Balabanova, Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Smart...
“Laura Freixas's is one of the most important voices in recent Spanish fiction. (…) A voice which is tenacious, interesting, intelligent, true to her creative principles, demanding, with the purpose of uniting woman, life and literature. She has declared it in fiction, in essays, and she now declares it in Love or whatever it is."
Pilar Castro, El Mundo
“One more piece in a long and polymeric trajectory -including essays, short stories, novels and translations- in which the author confronts and questions women’s sentimental education. … This is a polyphonic novel in which different voices and experiences are linked through an umbilical cord, at the same time as they are fragmented. Through quick strokes, a diachronic portrait of women in distress* is created… A novel with psychological dimensions - born with the key and tonality of a sentimental chronicle - about the desire for knowledge and the ability to choose the life that one desires."
Gemma Casamajó, Avui
She has given lectures and/or been a writer in residence at various Universities in Ireland, Great Britain and the United States, such as Limerick, Nottingham, Edinburgh, Cornell, Rutgers, City University of New York and others. In 2006 she taught a creative writing course at the University of Virginia. She is a member of the European Cultural Parliament.
Laura Freixas currently lives in Madrid. |
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