Director of the Literature and the Humanities Department: Carles Torner

Carles Torner (Barcelona, 1963) is a poet and writer in Catalan language.

He has a PhD from the Paris VIII University and has chaired the Committee for Translation and Linguistic Rights of International PEN (1994-2004). He is currently in charge of the Humanities and Science Department in the Institut Ramon Llull, the public body for the promotion of Catalan language and culture abroad. In 2007 he was director of the programme of literary events when Catalonia was Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Torner has published several volumes of poetry: In the white city (1984, Amadeu Oller Award), The limits of salt (1984, Carles Riba Award), The angel of plunder (1990), Life afterwards (1998, National Critics Award) and Europe’s bride (2008). He has also published a novel, The foreign woman (1997) and the essays The welcoming principle (1995) on intercultural dialogue and Shoah, a pedagogy of memory (2001, translated into French and Spanish), about Claude Lanzmann's movie. He is also the author of The indigenous converted me (2002, translated into French and Spanish), a book of interviews with Samuel Ruiz, bishop of Chiapas between 1959 and 2000.

He has been the editor of Readings of Salvador Espriu (2004), a collection of essays in which a wide range of Catalan authors choose and comment their Espriu’s favourite poem. His last title is Babel's arch (2005), a book mixing narrative and essay, in the form of thirty-five letters to women from different countries who are struggling against the threats to their languages and cultures.