Josep Maria Madern (Cervera, 1926 - Barcelona, 2012) was a radio journalist, storyteller, novelist, and playwright. After studying for an Arts degree in Barcelona, he worked as a radio journalist in Zaragoza (Radio Juventud) and Lleida (Radio Lérida). He married the actress Pilar Minguell, with whom he shared a love for theatre. In 1957, he moved to Paris where he lived for more than twenty-five years, working as head of the news division in Spanish of the Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (ORTF) and in Radio France Internationale. In 1983 he returned to Catalonia where he devoted the next three decades to writing his works, all of them in Catalan. He resided in Barcelona and also spent periods in Cervera, Tàrrega, and El Talladell. He died in Barcelona on 17 April 2012, at the age of eighty-six.

He began his literary career as a playwright, with works written in Spanish and French in the early 1970s. On his return to Catalonia, he was actively and devotedly involved in the process of revitalising Catalan culture after the Transition (which followed the Franco dictatorship), and also produced a series of mostly prose works (stories, novels, microfiction, and aphorisms), with some plays (Els ninots). His short story collection La pell de l’home received the 1986, City of Olot – Marià Vayreda Prize for Fiction.

He was an honorary member of the Associació d’Escriptors en Llengua Catalana (AELC – Association of Catalan Language Writers).

Web page: Elena Ferrer Moregó for AELC.
Documentation: Author’s personal files.
Cover photograph: Ceded by Pagès Editors.
Translation: Julie Wark.