Language and Literature professor at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona for fourteen years, they have also been very active as a translator into Catalan and, to a lesser extent, into Spanish, mainly of feminist literature and children's books, from German, English, French, Italian and Spanish.
They became known as an author in 2010 when they received the Documenta Prize for their novel Una terra solitària and the Rovelló Essay Prize for their study Les heroïnes contrataquen. Models literaris contra l'universal masculí a la literatura infantil i juvenil. Two years later they received the Roc Boronat Prize for La mala reputació, a collection of short stories which was very well received by readers and critics alike. In 2016 they published another short stories collection, Vents més salvatges, now translated into English by Laura Mcgloughlin as Wilder Winds (Fum d’Estampa Press). In 2016 they also published the picture book Gegantíssima and they were awarded the Apel·les Mestres Prize for Viure amb la Hilda (i els seus inconvenients). In Vides aturades (2017) they portray the testimony of people seeking refuge in Europe. In Feminisme de butxaca, kit de supervivència (2017), which has now reached its ninth edition, they reflect on gender discrimination in our society. In 2018 they published their first book of poems, in a bilingual edition Catalan-Spanish: Ferida, udol, viatge, illa, in 2019 Follem? De què (no) parlem quan parlem de sexualitats, and in 2020 A contrapel: O per què trencar el cercle de depilació, submisió i autoodi, now translated into English by Laura Mcgloughlin as Hairless (Polity Books). Their work has been translated into English, Spanish, Polish, Lithuanian, Italian, Galician, Portuguese or Quechuan, among other languages.
Bel Olid regularly collaborates in many branches of the Catalan cultural media and written press. They were president of CEATL (European Council of Literary Translators' Associations, 2013-2015), and, from March 2015 to March 2022, president of Associació d'Escriptors en Llengua Catalana (AELC – Association of Catalan Language Writers).