ĠorġMallia
Biography
Ġorġ Mallia is an author, cartoonist and communications academic, writing predominantly in Maltese but also in English. Mallia’s academic research and specialisation is in print and presentation media, personal communications, visual narrative, and instructional design and technology. He published a socio-political comic strip – One Family – on The Sunday Times (1993-2008); and more recently Żepp, which initially mapped the Covid-19 pandemic when it was published on The Times of Malta. It is now being published weekly in The Sunday Times of Malta as a socio-political satire. Mallia has produced and edited a number of newspapers and magazines, including the children’s magazine Sagħtar.
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Mallia was born in Qormi in 1957. He holds a B.A. in English Literature and an M.A. in Communications, both from the University of Malta. He read for his PhD in Instructional Technology at the University of Sheffield (UK). Mallia is a Professor of Communications, and also the Head of Department of Media and Communications at the Faculty of Media and Knowledge Sciences (University of Malta). He has been a guest lecturer in various Universities worldwide, particularly at the University of Malmö and the University of Lund, both in Sweden.
Mallia has published many fictional books and experimental short stories for children or adults, which he also illustrates. His Pullu series for very young children was a best seller for that age range. The fantasy adventure of Il-Professur Għasfur fl-Ispazju (2021) sees a narrator, a scientist, the inventor and his tortoise in space attempt to stop aliens from destroying the world, with L-Istejjer tal-Professur Għasfur (2024) completing the trilogy started in 2015. Ktieb ix-Xwejjaħ (2023; first edition published in 1987) is a fantasy which can be read on two levels; as a fairy tale for children, and as a parable of many elements and struggles that adults deal with, such as rites of passage. It was considered to be the first high fantasy novel in Maltese. Another recent publication, Il-Fantastiku (2023) includes various magical realism stories, created for adolescents.
Mitt Ruħ: Mikrostejjer dwar nies li jistgħu jkunu vera (2020) is a beautiful collection of a hundred micro-stories, exploring the complexity of every protagonist in just two hundred words. Mallia depicts his characters both in text and in ink line drawings. The stories are windows into the lives and emotions of the protagonists – revealing the endless cycle of human change, caught in the trials and tribulations of “normal” life. A collection of short stories, Il-Ħamsin (edited by Malli in 2021), which includes original stories by twenty-four of Malta’s pre-eminent writers, won the National Book Prize in the short story category.
Writing is a balm for Mallia; it allows him to see things with clearer eyes and from different perspectives. He loves words, their sounds and meanings, and he seeks to create verbal tapestries that weave in as many senses as possible. It is the Maltese language which guides his thoughts and creative expression thanks to its turn of phrase and its melody.
Biography written by Ruth Bezzina
