![]() |
Diamela Eltit | |
---|---|
![]() Diamela Eltit, 2018 | |
Born | Diamela Eltit González 1947 Santiago, Chile |
Occupation | Poet Professor |
Alma mater | Universidad Católica de Chile, University of Chile |
Genre | Novella, essay |
Notable awards | Guggenheim Fellowship, 1985 National Prize for Literature (Chile), 2018 Carlos Fuentes Prize, 2020 FIL Award, 2021 |
Spouse | Jorge Arrate |
Diamela Eltit (Santiago de Chile, 1947 [1] ) is a Chilean writer and university professor. She is a recipient of the National Prize for Literature.
Diamela Eltit graduated from college from Universidad Católica de Chile and pursued graduate studies in Literature at the Universidad de Chile in Santiago. In 1977, she began a teaching career in public high schools in Santiago, including Instituto Nacional and Liceo Carmela Carvajal. In 1984, she started teaching at universities in Chile, where she is currently professor at the Universidad Tecnológica Metropolitana and abroad.
She has been held visiting professorships at the University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins University, Stanford University, Washington University in St. Louis, and University of Pittsburgh, University of Virginia. Since 2007, New York University, she has been a distinguished global visiting professor and teaches at the Creative Writing Program in Spanish. [2] Eltit was the 2014–2015 Simon Bolivar Chair at the Center of Latin American Studies at Cambridge. [3]
In 2013 Princeton University acquired her archive, which includes manuscripts, letters, and photographs. [3]
In 1973, after the military coup in Chile, [4] she started publishing her writings. When democracy returned in 1990 she became a cultural attaché at the Chilean Embassy in Mexico until 1994. She was a representative of the Council of Chilean Universities to the Book National Council. She writes opinions por El Desconcierto, both in Santiago.
In 1979, Eltit created together with the poet Raúl Zurita, the visual artists Lotty Rosenfeld and Juan Castillo and the sociologist Fernando Balcells the Colectivo de Acciones de Arte (CADA), a vanguard group part of the so-called Escena de Avanzada . CADA struggled for reformulating artistic circuits under the Pinochet dictatorship. [3]
In 1980, Eltit published her first book, Una milla de cruces sobre el pavimento, a volume of essays. Her first novel, Lumpérica, appeared in 1983 [2] in Ediciones del Ornitorrinco, a small editorial from Santiago. The text dedicated to Eltit in the internet cultural portal Memoria Chilena, explains that 1980s was complicated for the Chilean intellectuals that had to elaborate strategies to publish and circulate their work in a cultural environment where censorship existed. In this context, women publications were a significant contribution because they generated renewed spaces of thinking on political issues and subjects as sexuality, authoritarianism, domestic life and gender identity. Eltit was part of this new generation and not only articulated an original literary project —a theoretical, esthetic, social and political proposal with a new reading space as perspective—, but also developed a visual work as a member of CADA".
Several of Eltit’s novels have been staged by different theater groups and translated into other languages. In 2012 the Spanish editorial house Periférica reached an agreement with Diamela Eltit to republish all her novels. [5]
Three of Eltit novels were chosen as part of the list selected in 2007 by 81 Latin American and Spanish writers and critics for the Colombian journal Semana of the 100 best novels in Spanish language in the last 25 years: Lumpérica (Nº58), El cuarto mundo (Nº67) y Los vigilantes (Nº100). In 2016 the journal Babelia, in Spain, selected one of Eltit's novels as one of the best 25 of century XXI.
Eltit's work has been the object of many studies. Casa de las Américas , in La Habana, dedicated to Eltit her Semana de Autor in 2002, and in 2006, the Universidad Católica de Chile organized the Coloquio Internacional de Escritores y Críticos: Homenaje a Diamela Eltit, which resulted in the book Diamela Eltit: redes locales, redes globales (Iberoamericana, 2009)
Eltit has two daughters and a son. She is married to Jorge Arrate, lawyer and economist. Her husband is the former president of the Socialist Party. In 2009 he was a presidential candidate representing a coalition between the Communist Party and socialist, humanist and Christian left groups.
Manuel Vázquez Montalbán was a prolific Spanish writer from Barcelona: journalist, novelist, poet, essayist, anthologue, prologist, humorist, critic and political prisoner as well as a gastronome and an FC Barcelona supporter.
Luisa Valenzuela Levinson is an Argentine post-'Boom' novelist and short story writer. Her writing is characterized by an experimental style which questions hierarchical social structures from a feminist perspective.
Alonso Cueto Caballero is a Peruvian author, university professor and newspaper columnist.
José Manuel Donoso Yáñez, known as José Donoso, was a Chilean writer, journalist and professor. He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent many years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States and Spain. Although he had left his country in the sixties for personal reasons, after 1973 he said his exile was also a form of protest against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. He returned to Chile in 1981 and lived there until his death.
Juan Gelman was an Argentine poet. He published more than twenty books of poetry between 1956 and his death in early 2014. He was a naturalized citizen of Mexico, country where he arrived as a political exile of the Military Junta.
Enrique Lihn Carrasco was a Chilean writer, literary critic, and cartoonist, mostly known as a poet, but who also wrote essays, short stories, novels, plays, and comic books.
Joaquín Edwards Bello was a Chilean writer and journalist of British descent.
Nelly Richard is a Chilean cultural theorist and editor of the Revista de crítica cultural. Among her books are The Insubordination of Signs and Cultural Residues.
Chilean literature refers to all written or literary work produced in Chile or by Chilean writers. The literature of Chile is usually written in Spanish. Chile has a rich literary tradition and has been home to two Nobel prize winners, the poets Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda. It has also seen three winners of the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, considered one of the most important Spanish language literature prizes: the novelist, journalist and diplomat Jorge Edwards (1998), and the poets Gonzalo Rojas (2003) and Nicanor Parra (2011).
Raúl Armando Zurita Canessa is a Chilean poet. He has received the Queen Sofia Prize for Ibero-American Poetry in 2020, the National Literature Prize in 2000, and the Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Poetry Award in 2016.
The second annual Altazor Awards took place on March 26, 2001, at the Teatro Municipal de Santiago.
Juan Eslava Galán, is a Spanish writer of historic genre, both fiction and non-fiction. He has published some of his works under the pen name Nicholas Wilcox.
Luciano Durán Böger was a Bolivian poet, writer and politician. Son of Luciano Duran Pérez and Aurora Böger Rivero, was born in 1904 in Santa Ana, capital of the Yacuma province of the Department of Beni in Bolivia, and died in 1996 in the city of La Paz.
Adriana Valdés Budge is a Chilean writer essayist.
Ana María del Río is a Chilean literature professor, feminist writer, and novelist. Her honors include the Santiago Municipal Literature Award and the María Luisa Bombal Award.
Pía Barros Bravo is a Chilean writer, best known for her short stories. She is associated with her country's literary Generation of '80.
María Flora Yáñez Bianchi was a Chilean writer who worked in the novel and short story genres, for which she received the University of Concepción's Atenea Award in 1947 and the Santiago Municipal Literature Award in 1952.
Marco Antonio de la Parra is a Chilean psychiatrist, writer, and dramatist. Many of his works, which are strongly influenced by the country's 1973–90 military regime, satirize the national condition through metaphors. He is the author of more than 70 titles translated into several languages, including plays, novels, storybooks, and essays.
Patricio Jara Álvarez is a Chilean writer and journalist.
Sonia Cristina Montecino Aguirre is a Chilean writer and anthropologist. In 2013, she was awarded the Premio Nacional de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales