Virginia López-Ballesteros

Born in Washington D.C. of Spanish parents, she learned to read and write in Paris, where she returned twenty years later to work for the Gallimard publishing house.
After studying at the Lycée français in Madrid and earning a B.A. in Philosophy at the Universidad Complutense, she started her professional career in publishing at Alfaguara Infantil-Juvenil, headed at the time by Miguel Azaola, the renowned publisher of children’s books. At Alfaguara she began in the negotiation of rights, attending the Frankfurt and Bologna Book Fairs.

She began publishing proper working as assistant to Pierre Marchand, the founder of Gallimard Jeunesse, before working as editor on several Gallimard collections.
After ten years in Paris, she returned to Madrid to take up a job as the Director of the Rights Department at the Author’s Rights Office of the PRISA group. During this time she gained extensive experience in representing authors and handling rights.

A perfect command of French and Spanish and a thorough knowledge of their respective publishing markets, coupled with an interest in books and literature, led her in January 2005 to set up the first literary agency specialised in representing French and Spanish-speaking authors, whatever their nationality.