Carme Riera

Spanish writer

Carme Riera Guilera (; born 12 January 1948) is a novelist and essayist. She has also written short stories, scripts for radio and television and literary criticism. She holds a doctorate in Hispanic Philology and is a professor of Spanish literature at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Riera was born in Palma. She attended the Sacred Heart primary school and the Joan Alcover Institute in Palma, where she met Majorcan writers and fell in love with a teacher, Francisco Llinás. In 1965 she moved to Barcelona to study Hispanic Philology in the Department of Philosophy and Letters of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She graduated in 1970 and the following year married Francisco Llinás and was hired by Manuel Blecua to give classes in the Department. That year her son Ferran was born, and she began her literary career. She writes in Catalan and Spanish. Her self translations are often published at the same time. She lives in Barcelona. Her best known work is the historical novel "Dins el darrer blau" (1994), winner of several prizes (see below) and the first novel in Catalan to win the Premio Nacional de Narrativa (National Prize for Narrative), awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Culture. An English translation by Kathleen McNerney, "Blue Horizons of no Return: Sephardic Journeys", is awaiting publication. Riera was elected to Seat n of the Real Academia Española on 19 April 2012, she took up her seat on 7 November 2013.

The extensive background reader of Carme Riera, consequence of a passionate attitude towards scholarly literature, forms a vast frame of references. Sappho, Petrarch, Goethe and Virginia Woolf parade through its pages, but also classical Spanish writers, as Miguel de Cervantes, Clarin, Carmen Laforet, Valle Inclán, Gil de Biedma However, the author has placed the roots of her narrative in Majorcan tales and the work of two crucial writers in the construction of contemporary Catalan narrative: Caterina Albert and Rodoreda.