I was born in 1960 in the town of Cangas, in the neighborhood called O Forte, a fact that may seem trivial but is not.
My birth certificate says that I am Xosé Manuel González, but when I write I do it with the pen name OLI.
After three years studying at a residential religious school, I arrived at the high school of Cangas. There I discovered that I was always the youngest one in the class, a thing that, at times, is good. Thanks to the magnificent teachers that I found in that school, I discovered the world of books. I must also thank Don Tomás, a man from an illustrious navy family who, one day, decided to temporarily flee his comfortable Madrid neighborhood and ended up in my grandmother’s house putting in my hands, along with a chess set that I still have, a copy of Peter Simple and several books of the adventures of Guillermo Brown. And of course, the detergent brand Colón was kind enough to give me, wrapped in plastic in the bucket, a copy of “The Gulag Archipelago” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and another book by Alberto Moravia, whose name I cannot recall. In those years, the television finished its broadcasts at 4:30 PM and I took advantage of those hours to read everything that landed in my hands, whether they were books or some issue of La Cordoniz that my uncle had left behind, surely with the secret intention that I would discover refined humor.
From 1977 to 1980, I studied education and I started to teach in my old preschool, which we called a “parvulario” at that time. In 1983, I started to teach in the public schools and discovered the existence of the movements of pedagogical reform and the normalization of the Galician language. I am part of the Nova Escola Galega (a Galician movement to reform teaching practices), and for a time I was a part of its national council and also of the Revista Galega de Educación (the Galician Education Magazine), running the preschool literature pages.
I participated in courses about the animation of children’s literature, and my mentors included Fedrico Martín, Javier Carvajal, Miguel Calatayud and Joan Manuel Gisbert.In their courses, I learned quite a bit and I developed a passion for early childhood literature. I also gave courses about animation of literature, writing workshops, and talks about children’s literature.
In 1992, I got involved in publishing houses and literary collections. Since its founding I have been a part of the Kalandraka project. I have translated authors such as Maurice Sendak, Leo Lionni, André François, David McKee, and Arnold Lobel to both Galician and Spanish.
At the time of this writing,
I am the author of 15 books for young readers,
if we can say that books are for specific ages.
For more than thirty years, I was a vacation writer, which is to say that I did in the free time that my vacations gave me from teaching, working in school administration, and running the school’s library.
Now I have all the time in the world to write, read, watch films and series, and enjoy time with my grandchildren.