Laura Gallego García

Laura Gallego García (Cuart de Poblet, Valencia, October 11, 1977) is a Spanish author of children's and youth literature specialized in fantasy themes. She has studied Hispanic Philology at the University of Valencia. In 2005 she already had more than a dozen titles published with tens of thousands of copies sold, which makes her a reference in Spanish youth literature.

Career

At age 11, he began writing Zodiaccía, a different world. It took her three years to finish it and, although it has never been published, she has a special affection for that story. It was then clear to her that she wanted to be a writer and for years she sent her writing to various literary contests.

At the age of 20, after finishing high school, he decided to study Hispanic Philology at the University of Valencia. He kept sending his texts to publishers and contests but he did not manage to publish anything until he wrote Finis Mundi. Previously, he had written 13 books, but none of them saw the light of day. With Finis Mundi the author, after several years of participation, won the Barco de Vapor Award in 1999, held annually by Editorial SM.

Finis Mundi was followed by titles such as Mandrágora (Pearson Alhambra), or the tetralogy Chronicles of the Tower. However, although his fame is mainly due to youth novels, he has also published works aimed at a children's audience.

In 2002, she was awarded again in this competition, this time for her novel The Legend of the Wandering King. He has also published in SM The collector of extraordinary watches, the trilogy Memories of Idhún, Alas de fuego, Alas Negras, Where the trees sing, Two candles for the devil, the saga Chronicles of the Tower and The daughters of Tara, the latter within the “Gran Angular” collection.

In 2004 he began publishing his second trilogy, titled Memories of Idhún (Memories of Idhún I: The Resistance, Memories of Idhún II: Tríada i>, Memories of Idhún III: Pantheon) with which it has achieved its greatest success to date of 2017, with more than 1,000,000 copies sold. Memories of Idhún has been adapted into a graphic novel.

She is the founder of the university magazine Náyade, distributed by the Faculty of Philology of the University of Valencia and of which she was co-director from 1997 to 2010.

Later, he published several independent books, most of them with fantasy themes, in addition to the second part of Alas de fuego, titled Alas negra. She has also delved into realistic literature with the series Sara y las goleadoras, which includes titles such as: Creating a team, The girls are warriors, Scorers in the league, Football and love are incompatible, The scorers do not give up and The last goal. Her novel Where the Trees Sing, published in October 2011, won the National Prize for Children's and Youth Literature for 2012. Likewise, her career was rewarded with the Cervantes Chico Prize. That same year, 2012, she returned to children's literature with Wizard by chance .

In March 2017, she published Por una rosa, a book that contains three stories written by three different authors: Laura Gallego, Javier Ruescas and Benito Taibo. These are three stories set in the universe of the classic story Beauty and the Beast.

In 2018 he published Axlin's Bestiary, the first book of the Guardians of the Citadel trilogy, and The Secret of Xein the second book of this saga and the third and final part of this saga came out on March 29, 2019 with its title Rox's mission.

In September 2021 he published The Eternal Emperor Cycle, a new independent fantasy novel.

On October 20, 2022, he published his most recent novel: Stravagantia. An independent novel without a continuation of adventures developed in a fantastic world.

Thematic and style features

Laura Gallego has explored many literary themes: she began writing historical-fantastic literature, with her novel Finis Mundi; but she also tried science fiction, with The Daughters of Tara ; and later the epic fantasy with Memories of Idhún; without forgetting her children's literature either.

In his fantastic narrative, and particularly in Memories of Idhún, the love theme is as important or more important than the fantastic one; The characters constantly express their feelings, doubts, misgivings, disappointments, etc., and are guided by them, generally more than by other concepts such as honor or duty. Thus, reflection on one's own feelings occupies a lot of space in the dialogues and the reproduction of thought, a fact favored by the decision to use a passionate love triangle in his work Memories of Idhún. His work takes some elements as inspiration from the novels of Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, such as The Death's Door Cycle, The Sword of Joram and Dragonlance.

Books

His work has been translated into a multitude of languages: Catalan, Romanian, French, Polish, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Hungarian, English, Italian, German, Turkish, Portuguese, Korean and Bulgarian. He has a total of 41 books written as of 2021.

Sagas

Chronicles of the Tower

Memories of Idhún

Ahriel

Sara And The Scorers

Adventures By Chance

Guardians of the Citadel

Others

Recognitions

The most important recognition that the author has received is the National Prize for Children's and Young People's Literature in 2012, for her fantasy-epic genre work Where the Trees Sing. This award, worth 20,000 euros, was awarded by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports, which designated her work as the best children's or youth literature book published in 2011 in any of the official languages spoken in Spain.

Likewise, the Alcalá de Henares City Council and the Association of Booksellers and Stationers awarded her the Cervantes Chico Prize for Youth Literature in 2011 and she was awarded the El Barco de Vapor Children's Literature Prize in 2002 with her work The Legend of the Wandering King and in 1999 for his work Finis Mundi. He also received the Imaginamalaga 2013 Prize for The Book of Portals, as well as the Kelvin 505 Award, the latter in 2016.

Presence in networks

Laura Gallego, as a writer who has developed her activity mainly in the XXI century, has maintained since the first years of This is an important presence on the internet.

In addition to its own website, the Laura Gallego brand can be found on almost all social networks. These are not managed by the author directly, but through a community manager.

From 2003 to 2017 the author maintained an important literature forum in Spanish, dedicated both to its discussion and to the users' own production. It was closed in September 2017 because it was considered an obsolete format in the era of social networks and has currently been deleted from the network.