In 2006, Leire Bilbao made the leap into the literary world with her first book of poems, Ezkatak (Scales). Then came Scanner (Susa, 2011), the bilingual book of poems Entre escamas (Between Scales) and Etxeko urak (Home Waters, Susa, 2020).
Her numerous poems have been published in different anthologies and translated into a dozen languages. Several musicians have also transformed them into songs. These include three records with her lyrics: Musua (The Kiss, Katxiporreta, 2018), Bizi dantza (Dance Life, Katxiporreta, 2019) and Txitxarroa eta atuna (The Mackerel and the Tuna, Maramara, 2023).
As for children’s and young adult literature, she has published more than twenty works, many of which have received awards. To cite some of them, she won the 2017 Euskadi Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature and the 2019 Kirico Prize for the book of poems Xomorropoemak eta beste piztia batzuk (Bugpoems and Some Other Wild Beasts), and the 2022 Euskadi Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature for the work Barruko hotsak (Inner Voices).
She won the 2021 Lauaxeta Poetry Prize for the book of poems Etxeko urak, which was published as Agas Madres by the La Bella Varsovia publishing house.
