Alicia Carbo-Guha

I was born and grew up in Barcelona, Spain. With lots of different interests and dreams, I loved traveling and seeing the world. Before starting college, I backpacked through western and eastern Europe.

After graduating in graphic design, I worked for advertising agencies in Madrid and Toronto, Canada, where I met my husband. Shortly after, we tied the knot and traveled to Kolkata and Barcelona to celebrate the wedding with our families. 

We lived in Ottawa and later in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where we welcomed our first daughter, Vanessa. A few years later, work and family brought us back to Barcelona, where our daughter Sharmila was born.

While in Barcelona, I worked with literary agent Carmen Balcells. I really value this experience because it was my introduction to publishing. A few years later, while working with Zimmer Biomed, I completed my studies in Marketing. I was given new responsibilities for their endoscopy and arthroscopy business lines and traveled extensively in Southern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. 

Around Christmas of 1992, I came across a vendor selling children's books, personalized on-demand. I liked the idea! I thought that making children the protagonists of a story would engage their interest. This could be a great didactic tool to cover important topics. It was time for me to start something new. I believed in the conservation of nature, and I thought of writing and illustrating a book for children on this topic, featuring extensive personalization.

During 1993, I wrote and illustrated Buku i la Natura. I incorporated as Ediciones Ipse and published it under a pen name in Catalan. The Spanish and English translations followed shortly after. I was ecstatic when before Christmas, Buku i la Natura was endorsed on national TV as one of the five best books for children that year.

Sales of Buku i la Natura picked up. As a publisher, I obtained Government support, and I was able to move from my home office to the Barcelona Activa incubator. The following two years, while printing on-demand, distributing, marketing, and selling the books, I wrote and illustrated Buku i les Normes and started a new series called Abracadabra. I would have never been able to do it all without the help and support of my family! 

Buku i la Natura and Buku i les Normes were exhibited at the Childrens' Book Fair in Bologna, Italy. Apart from fun family trips around Italy that culminated at the Bologna's book fair, we all have fond memories of our travels across Spain promoting the books nationally. Buku spiced up great family dinner discussions with our children on nature, rules, tolerance, and topics for new books. In 1995, I published Miki and the Gold Pendant and Sitar and the King of Ak-ku in Catalan, Spanish and English.

In the late 1990s, Spain's economic crisis didn't spare our family. Yet, this opened new opportunities. Our daughters were getting ready for university. We thought it would be an excellent experience for them to continue their education in Canada. And we moved back to Toronto. Since then, I have enjoyed working as a marketer, most recently in the aerospace sector.

Beginning 2020, COVID has allowed me to take a step back. Since Buku i la Natura was published, our planet's environment has continued to degrade. This prompted me to review Buku and Nature. What initially started as a review became a new book, Saving Nature. To reach as many children as possible, I decided that the Adventures with Buku series would not be personalized, and I introduced new characters, Malena, Oli, and Samu.