Sebastià Portell (Ses Salines, Mallorca, 1992) is a writer and author of the novels El dia que va morir David Bowie (2016, winner of the Barcelona Time Out Prize for Creator of the Year), Ariel i els cossos (2019) and Les altures (2024). He has also published the short story collection Maracaibo (2014), the essay Les nenes que llegien al lavabo (2021), and the plays La mort de na Margalida (2012, a finalist for the 2012 Pare Colom Award for Mediterranean Theatre, and a Special Mention in the Fifteenth Boira-Òmnium Theatre Award), Un torrent que era la mar (2014, winner of the Sixth City of Badalona Theatre Prize), L’endemà de Fedra (2016), and Transbord (2018, a finalist in the Sixth Balearic Islands Dramaturgy Tournament). He has also edited the biographical study Antònia Vicens. Massa deutes amb les flors (2016), and Amors sense casa (2018), the first Catalan anthology of LGBTQ poetry.

He has translated from English and Galician authors such as Virginia Woolf, Saba Sams, Marilar Aleixandre, Berta Dávila and Gonzalo Hermo.

Sebastià Portell has been a member of the Associació d’Escriptors en Llengua Catalana (AELC – Association of Catalan language Writers) since 2017. From March 2022 he is the president of the Associació d'Escriptors en Llengua Catalana.

Web page: Toni Terrades for AELC
Front page photograph: © Luca Rocchi
Translation: Julie Wark