Bio

Antoni Veciana Ribes (Reus) is a Catalan philologist and writer. He has a degree in Catalan philology from Rovira i Virgili University, a master's in political science from the Open University of Catalonia and a PhD in cultural management.

He has worked as a career civil servant in the Department of Social Rights, Interior and Culture of the Catalan government, as well as a professor of literature and language at Rovira i Virgili University. He has also worked as a theatre producer.

As a writer, Antoni began with articles in El Punt and Presència, as well as theatre reviews in NW and occasionally in Núvol, Quadern El País, Catalunya Diari, Reus Digital and Catorze.

He has also written audiovisual scripts and theatre plays. In 2023 he published the play Patró (Ganzell), a tragedy that had previously been premiered in 2018.

Nicolau was his first novel, published in 2022 (La Segona Perifèria). It was well received by critics and among the ten best novels of 2022 according to Òmnium Cultural and Quadern d'El País.

Antoni published his second novel, Dolça a la torre de fang (Dolça in the Clay Tower) (La Segona Perifèria) in 2024, again to critical acclaim and it too was named one of the ten best novels of the year by Òmnium Cultural and the Finestres Awards.

Project

Roller hockey is a niche sport in Catalonia yet has been central to the social life of many towns and cities across the country. The stars of this sport are anonymous to the majority of the population but can be legends to some: one day they can be acclaimed by thousands of people in a stadium and the next day return to complete anonymity. Knowing how to move between two worlds is a topic to exploit in writing, because life has brought us here - being one person in an algorithm and another completely different one in another reality. Hockey is the reason for the project to be developed: a fast, violent sport posited on balance, a metaphor in itself.