Jesús Ballaz

Jesús Ballaz

I was born in 1946 in Liédena, a municipality that borders Leyre and Javier, two emblematic places in Navarra. Although I have lived in Catalonia for many years, I still feel that the center of my world is Arangoiti. Another way of saying that a writer's stories are rooted in his childhood. I graduated in Philosophy and Letters, and all my working life has been related to books. I have sat on all four sides of an editorial table: editor, translator, critic and author.

In addition to editing school and youth books, I have translated and reviewed children's books. I got a scholarship to spend time at the Jugendbibliothek in Munich, and there I discovered that what I liked was done all over the world in hundreds of languages.

Translating and criticizing (in both activities I received a medal, the National Award) encouraged me to write. For more than 35 years I have been publishing narrative books for children and young people, some of which have been awarded or have been translated into all the languages of Spain and several foreign languages: German, French, Turkish, Japanese, Korean, Chinese... And, finally , this book, what a joy!, has been translated into Portuguese, a language that two of my grandchildren speak.