Cristina Fernández Cubas

Cristina Fernández Cubas (Arenys de Mar, Barcelona province, 1945) is a Spanish writer and journalist. She has been described as "one of the most important writers who have begun to publish since the end of the Franco dictatorship" and has been credited with inaugurating "a renaissance in the short story genre in Spain."

Cubas studied Law and Journalism at the University of Barcelona. She married the writer Carlos Trías Sagnier, and practised journalism from an early age. She has lived in many different cities, including Cairo, Lima, Buenos Aires, Paris and Berlin.

She published her first collection of short stories, Mi hermana Elba, in 1980, followed by: Los altillos de Brumal (1983), El ángulo del horror (1990), Con Ágatha en Estambul (1994), Parientes pobres del diablo (2006, winning the Premio Setenil in the same year). In 2009, her anthology Todos los cuentos was awarded several prizes, including the Premio Ciudad de Barcelona, the Premio Salambó, the Premio Qwerty and the Premio Tormenta.

She has also written novels: El año de Gracia, principally set on the island of Gruinard and El columpio; a play (Hermanas de sangre) and a book of memoirs (Cosas que ya no existen) which won the Premio NH Hoteles for short stories in 2001.

In 2013 she published the novel La puerta entreabierta under the pseudonym Fernanda Kubbs, in which a sceptical journalist undergoes an unexpected transformation when she visits a clairvoyant.

In 2016 she was awarded the National Literature Prize for Narrative and the Premio de la Crítica Española for her collection of short stories La habitación de Nona, translated into English as Nona’s Room.

In the words of the academic Phyllis Zatlin, "her stories tend to explore the mysteries of both external reality and of the human psyche. Most of them, including some that fall outside the fantastic mode, explore inner worlds of fantasy and unconscious desires”.

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