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			The author in the Who's Who of Catalan Literature
			Biobibliography in the Catalan Hyperencyclopedia
			Works in the Biblioteca de Catalunya
			The author in the Congress Library (U.S.)
			The author in the COPAC Catalogue (U.K.)
		Maria Barbal on the Lletra website in Catalan Including more resources and reading suggestions.
		AELC Website Biography, publications and comments on the page of the Association of Catalan Language Writers.
		Barbal in the City of Barcelona Literary Corpus Page of the City of Barcelona Literary Corpus, with biography, bibliographic information and links.
		Reading Guides Extensive educational dossier prepared by SEDEC (Catalan Language Teaching Service of the Department of Education of Catalonia), with material on Pedra de tartera (Mountain Scree), Ulleres de sol (Sunglasses), Escrivia cartes al cel (Writing Letters to Heaven), Bari and Carrer Bolívia (Bolivia Street).
		WORKS
		Fragment of País íntim (Intimate Country), Winner of the 2005 Bertrana Prize At Vilaweb Lletres (28 November 2005).
		COMMENTS
		"Nimietats històriques" (Historical Trifles) Melcior Comes includes in his blog a review of País íntim published in Presència (11 December 2005).
		Analysis of Pedra de Tartera A reading proposal on “Biblionet”, the interactive guide to Catalan literature.
		FURTHER INFORMATION
		País íntim, Winner of the Bertrana Prize Maria Barbal received the Prudenci Bertrana Prize in 2005. Gerard Bagué writes about the award in El País (9 September 2005).
		Maria Barbal in "Alexandria"... ... on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the publication of her first novel Pedra de tartera.
		Pedra de lleron (Mountain Scree) Page on the publication of Pedra de tartera in Asturian.
		Catalan PEN Club Centre Maria Barbal is a member of the Women Writers’ Committee of the Catalan PEN Club.

Who I Am And Why I Write …

I am a woman. I was born in Tremp so they call me “Trempolina”. I spent my childhood and early adolescence in the Pallars region. Hundreds of days in Jussà and hundreds of hours in Sobirà.

My parents gave me what they were unable to have themselves: an education from an early age, but that was in the 1950s, the schools breathed submission and Catalan was ignored. Again, unlike my parents, I wasn’t bothered by any necessary work that wasn’t studying. My brother and I, like most kids from Tremp, learned to swim in the Sant Antoni reservoir. I’m speaking about holiday time, but the best holidays we had were in the early years, in the Àssua Valley, in my godmother’s house when there were still cultivated fields and livestock to be taken out. Not far away from home, as if it were an effortless game, I learned the tasks of summer. Reaping, binding the sheaves, threshing … It was the end of an epoch which, when I was twelve years old, had already finished for my mother’s family with the great flow of people going from the mountains to the cities.

Mine was only a cultural migration. I arrived in Barcelona in 1964 when I was fourteen to continue my secondary school studies. I didn’t know then that it would become my city. This occurred much later when I finished my Arts Degree at the Central University of Barcelona and I decided to find a job in teaching.

I’d liked writing for some time but this was an instinctively intimate endeavour that I tended not to talk about.

I remember writing some verses on a pad with squared paper when I must have been about thirteen or fourteen. From this stage there are also some notebooks where I wrote a diary. Before I went with my classmates from the Institut Montserrat on a trip to Castile my father had asked me to write a report. His love for the land, people, reading, anecdotes, and words I regard as definitive in the fact of my beginning to write. But now I’m being asked why I write, in present tense.

There’s more than one answer so each one covers only a part of the reasons, although any one of these parts alone is sufficient reason for me to write.

I write because I like it.

Because it’s a way of getting inside other skins. By which I mean it enables me to be who I’m not, and to do what I don’t do. No doubt it’s an attempt at transvestitism and nonconformity.

I write to have the freedom to say what I wouldn’t say in conversation.

Sometimes I write out of need.