Lea Vélez (Madrid, May 16, 1970) is a Spanish author, screenwriter and journalist.[1]
Lea Vélez | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Lea González-Vélez Martín May 16, 1970 Madrid, Spain |
| Occupation(s) | Author, Screenwriter |
| Children | 2 |
| Awards | Agustín González Theater Prize (2009) |
| Writing career | |
| Language | Spanish |
| Genre | Fiction |
Early life and education
editShe was born into a family with a broad literary tradition. Daughter of the intellectual Carlos Vélez (1930–2014), she studied journalism at the Complutense University of Madrid and graduated in Film Screenwriting at ECAM (Madrid cinema school).
Career
editHer television career began in 1998, writing storyline and scripts for the series El súper. She has been a fiction content creator and show runner, co-creating series such as La Verdad de Laura or Luna Negra. She has created more than 700 hours of TV fiction.
For many years she collaborated closely with the screenwriter and author Susana Prieto. Writing as a team they published two novels, El desván (2004) and La Esfera de Ababol (2006). Later she takes on the stage with the play Tiza (2008), also in collaboration with Prieto, a satire on education that received the Agustín González Theater Prize and remained on the Madrid billboard for three seasons.[2]
After the death of her husband in 2011, she changed the direction of her career, leaving television aside to dedicate herself entirely to literature and the education of her small children. For them, and in an effort to overcome grief, she built a tree house in the large oak tree in the garden without anybody's help. The reflections she reached were used in her novel Nuestra casa en el árbol (Our Tree House), in which she narrates the adventures of a widow with three children in a large house by the River Hamble after losing her husband. A year before this book she wrote La cirujana de Palma[3] and El Jardín de la memoria (2014).
Our tree house was published in 2017 and became a long seller, a book recommended and loved by readers over the years.[4] It is of particular interest to the gifted children parent's community. The same year she published La Olivetti, la espía y el loro, a book in which she narrates the back stage of the TV program Encuentros con las letras, directed by her father and for which her mother, María Luisa Martín, ran the press office from the kitchen of her house while small Lea played under the table.[5][6]
Other recent books are La sonrisa de los pájaros (2019)[7] or Mi querido extraterrestre (2020). In 2024 she published La hija de Gardel, a political thriller in the context of the trials of the Argentine military in Spain and the underworld of state terrorism.[8]
She currently lives in Brighton (East Sussex, England), with her two children.
Awards and honours
edit- Agustín González Theater Prize (2009)
Bibliography
editNovels
edit- La hija de Gardel. Contraluz, 2024
- Mi querido extraterreestre. Destino, 2020
- La sonrisa de los pájaros. Destino, 2019
- Nuestra casa en el árbol. Destino, 2017
- La Olivetti, el espía y el loro. Sílex, 2017
- El jardín de la memoria. Galaxia Gutenberg, 2014
- La cirujana de Palma. Ediciones B, 2014
- La esfera de Ababol. (with Susana Prieto) Planeta, 2006
- El desván. (with Susana Prieto) Plaza & Janés, 2004
Theatre
edit- Tiza (with Susana Prieto), 2008
References
edit- ^ "'Spielberg me ha enseñado a escribir novelas'". El Mundo (in Spanish). 12 June 2014.
- ^ "Susana Prieto y Lea Vélez ganan el I Premio de Teatro Agustín González". El Confidencial (in Spanish). 10 March 2009.
- ^ "Entrevista con Lea Vélez - Feria del Libro de Madrid 2014". Youtube (in Spanish). 14 June 2014.
- ^ "Lea Vélez: 'Pensamos la educación como algo que le damos a los hijos, eso plantea una relación de poder injusta'". Vozpopuli.com (in Spanish). 7 May 2017.
- ^ Elvira Lindo (10 December 2017). "'No te vayas sin decirme adiós'". El País (in Spanish).
- ^ "Lea Vélez: 'La literatura se presentaba como alternativa emocional al franquismo'". El Correo (in Spanish). 17 February 2018.
- ^ "Lea Vélez: 'La verdad y la realidad son muy difíciles de creer'". ABC (in Spanish). 14 March 2019.
- ^ "Lea Vélez: 'La maldad se da en ciertas circunstancias, con la excepción de los hijos de puta, que son siempre malos'". El Periódico de España (in Spanish). 28 March 2024.