Joaquim Sala-Sanahuja (Sabadell, 1953), writer, translator, and teacher, studied Engineering in Barcelona and was awarded the Amadeu Oller Prize for his collection of poems La veu del ciclista (1973). He subsequently went to Paris to study Philosophy at Paris 8 University, where he obtained a BA in Modern Literature and a PhD in 1988. While in Paris, he was codirector of the “Poesia Universal del Segle XX” of the publishing house Edicions del Mall.

In 1986 he returned to Catalonia to teach at the University School of Translation and Interpreting and, after 1996, at the Autonomous University of Barcelona Faculty of Translation and Interpreting. Since then, he has combined teaching with writing articles that are published in several media outlets and also organising courses in literature and translation in Barcelona and Lisbon.

Sala-Sanahuja has continued to write poetry and has published the collections Pessebres (1991) and Pas de Coro (1998), while also seeking to break down barriers between literary genres by experimenting with works he coauthors with artists, among them Escriny Walpurgis (1989, with engravings by Gabriel), and El viatge a Tokushima (1992), with engravings by Jordi Alcaraz. Moreover, he writes essays on a range of subjects.

As a translator from French and Portuguese, he is mainly interested in classical authors like Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Molière, and Pessoa, contemporary poets like René Char, Francis Ponge, and Gastão Cruz, and thinkers like Stendhal and Barthes. His work in this domain has been recognised with such awards as the 1987 Generalitat (Government) of Catalonia Prize for Translation, the 2003 “Serra d’Or” Critics’ Prize, and the 2013 Mots Passants Translation Prize.

He is a founding member of La Mirada de Sabadell Foundation, a full member of the Bosch i Cardellach Foundation, and a member of the Associació d’Escriptors en Llengua Catalana (AELC – Association of Catalan Language Writers).

Web page: Cinta Paloma for AELC.
Documentation: Author’s personal files.
Photograph: Carme Esteve / AELC.
Translation: Julie Wark.