Adrian Grima (Malta, 1968) is a senior lecturer in Maltese Literature at the University of Malta. He received his Ph.D. with a thesis about five metaphors that have shaped the national imaginary in Maltese literature. His research was supervized by Professor Joseph A. Buttigieg (University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA) and Professor Oliver Friggieri (University of Malta).

He has read papers on literature, culture and the Mediterranean at conferences in Malta, Arezzo, Budapest, Cyprus, Delphi (in Greece), London, Palermo, Paris, Prague, Puerto Rico, Reggio Calabria, Rome, and at the universities of Yale and Colorado at Boulder in the USA. He has published articles on literature and culture and academic papers in Malta, Brazil, Cyprus, France, Italy, and the USA.



In May 2005, Dr. Grima was appointed Head of the Technical Committee for Literature within the National Council for the Maltese Language and led the team that organized the first Malta International Short Story Festival in December 2005 with the participation of writers from Malta, Morocco, Italy and Australia (www.letteraturamaltija.com).



In November 2005 Adrian Grima co-organized an international symposium on the promotion of literature in Europe with Maria Grech Ganado run by Inizjamed and Literature Across Frontiers with the support of the Culture 2000 programme of the EU, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Youth and Employment, and with the support of the British Council and the Ministry of Tourism and Culture (www.inizjamed.org).



In 1999 Adrian Grima published It-Trumbettier, a book of poetry in Maltese, with illustrations by Adrian Mamo and Raphael Vella and English translations he made with Peter Serracino Inglott, which won second prize in the Premio Tivoli Europa Giovani for books of poetry published in Europe in 1999. His second collection of poetry written between 1995 and 2005, Rakkmu, was published in 2006 (Klabb Kotba Maltin). Dr. Maria Aristomedou of the University of London, wrote that "It is rare to come across a collection that lightly, bravely and with humour, touches the parts that hurt us most: that remind us of our inability to understand the other person, be they our closest friend or lover.”



In June 2008, together with Immanuel Mifsud and other contributors, he published a book of poetry and comments about climate change, Riħ min-Nofsinhar (Malta: Edizzjoni Skarta) which won the National Award for the Most Creative Book published in 2008. Adrian Grima is the winner of the Premio Storie 2009 per la scrittura momentista (sezione straniera), an award for "momentist" writing given by Leconte Editore and the international literary magazine Storie.



In December 2005, Midsea Books and Inizjamed published The Tragedy of the Elephant, a selection of his poems translated into English as part of a series of six books of Contemporary Maltese Literature in Translation.



Some of his poems have appeared in literary magazines and anthologies in Algeria, Italy, Germany, Cyprus, Morocco, The Netherlands, Ireland, Israel, Austria, France, Corsica, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Canada, and the USA, and he has read his works at festival and international events in many European and Mediterranean countries, including the Edinburgh International Book Festival, but also at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali, Indonesia. In September 2006 he was invited to Derry by the Northern Ireland Arts Council to spend a number of weeks writing at the Verbal Arts Centre. In April 2007 he returned to continue his collaboration with musician Rory McCarron and writer Catherine McGrotty.