Josep A. Grimalt (Felanitx, 1938) is a short-story writer and essayist. With a degree in Law and a doctorate in Romance Philology, for which he wrote a thesis entitled La catalogació de les rondalles de mossèn Alcover com a introducció a llur estudi (Cataloguing the Stories of Monsignor Alcover as an Introduction to their Study – 1975), he occupies the Chair of Catalan Philology at the Balearic Islands University where he is presently Emeritus Professor. As a prominent specialist in Catalan folktale writers, he is director of the annotated edition of the Aplec de rondaies mallorquines d'En Jordi d'es Racó (1996-...) (Collection of the Mallorcan Stories of Jordi d’es Racó (1996 - …)) and is the leading expert on the story-collecting work of Antoni M. Alcover. He has edited, among other works of Alcover, his Contarelles (Stories – 1982), as well as the Complete Works of Llorenç Villalonga (1988-...) besides publishing numerous research papers in specialist reviews and giving lectures on the Catalan folktale tradition, language and literature.

He has also translated, inter alia, the novel La Princesse de Clèves (The Princess of Cleves) by Madame de Lafayette, which was published in 1990, and is author himself of the short novel Història d'una dama i un lloro (The Story of a Lady and a Parrot), which was published in 1960, and reissued in 2001. Among his other publications are Gramàtica i urbanitat (Grammar and Urbanity – 1990) and La figura de Judes a la literatura (Notes per a un estudi sobre hipertextualitat) (The Figure of Judas in Literature (Notes for a Study of Hypertextuality) – 2004). He has worked in radio, in programmes on theatre and linguistic divulgation, and in television as well, for example in the programmes Lletra menuda ("Small Print") from 1986 to 1988, and Parlant en plata ("Speaking Clearly"), from 2004 to 2006.

He is a member of honor the Associació d'Escriptors de Llengua Catalana (Association of Catalan Language Writers, AELC).

Contact address.



Web page: Guillem Molla for AELC.
Translation: Julie Wark.
Photographs: Author's personal files.