Carmen Balcells - the woman behind the Latin American literary boom
Durada: 21 min
12/08/2024
Catalan literary agent Carmen Balcells considered a revolutionary in the publishing industry, single-handedly transformed the industry.She dignified the writing profession by banning lifetime contracts and ensuring writers could negotiate their terms. Her literary agency, founded during the Franco dictatorship in Spain, played a key role in the Latin American literary boom of the 1960s, discovering and publishing bestselling authors like Gabriel García Márquez and Isabel Allende. Balcells passed away in 2015, and August 9th would have been her 94th birthday. Lea Beliaeva Bander is joined by Cillian Shields, who talks to Maribel Luque, director of the Carmen Balcells Literary Agency, and Laura Palomares, Balcells' granddaughter, about the professional and personal life of the icon. Instead of a Catalan phrase, we have chosen a quote from Balcells: "Anyone can write a good first book - it's in the second novel that writers prove themselves".