Luisa Valenzuela

Luisa Valenzuela was born on the 26^th November 1938 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is a post-Boom novelist and a short story writer in the country. Her writings are characterized by experimental avant-garde patterns that query the hierarchical social arrangements from the feminist standpoint. She is popular for her work that was written in reply to the despotism of the 1970s in the country. Works like Como en la guerra (1977), Cambio de armas (1982) and Cola de lagartija (1983) all have a hard critique of the despotism I the country with an examination of the patriarchal patterns of asocial organization in the country and the power patterns that inhere in the human sexuality and gender connections.

source of picture: www.alfaguara.com

Biography

Luisa Valenzuela was born in Buenos Aieres on the 26^th November 1938 to the family of Pablo Franciso Valenzuela, a physician and to the mother called Luisa Mercedes Levinson who is also a writer. Many writers of the country gathered at her mother’s house, like Adolfo BioyCasares, Jorge Luis Borges and Ernesto Sabato. Though she had a good interest in the natural sciences, she started publishing in many newspapers of the country at the age of 17 and she worked for Radio Belgrano. At the age of 20, she barely got married to Theodore Marjak, a French merchant marine and she relocated to Paris where she worked for the Radio TV Française, and she met with the members of both the nouveau roman literary movement and Tel Quel.

Luisa Valenzuela published her debut fiction work with the name Clara while she was in France. in the year 1958, Luisa Valenzuela gave birth to her first daughter called Anna-Luisa. She moved back to her country in the year 1965 and it was there that she worked as a journalist for the La Nacion and Crisis Magazine. In the year 1965, she divorced with the husband. Within the year 1967 and the year 1968, Luisa Valenzuela travelled all through Bolivia, Peru and Brazil as she was working with La Nacion magazine of the country.

In the year 1969, Luisa Valenzuela got the Fulbright Scholarship to study at the University of Iowa and it was there that she wrote The Efficient Cat. Between the year 1972 and the year 1974, Luisa Valenzuela resided in Mexico City, Paris and Barcelona with a short stay in New York City. It was while she was in New York that she made the research on the expression of the Marginal United States literature as a receiver of the scholarship that was given to her by the Argentina’s National Fund for the Arts of the country.

Because of the National Reorganization Process that partially censored her novel called He Who Searches, as they extracted off the torture scene in the book, she relocated to United States and resided there for ten years. It was there that she published her short fiction book called Change of Guard in the year 1982. In the year 1983, she published the novel called The Lizard's Tail.

Luisa Valenzuela was a resident writer at the Center for the Interamerican Relations at New York City and in Columbia University. She taught writing workshops and seminars for ten years at the Columbia University.

Luisa Valenzuela was a member of the Freedom to Writer Committee of the PEN American Center. She was given the award of the Guggenhein Scholarship in the year 1983. She went back to the city of Buenos Aires in the year 1989 and it was there that she completed her fiction works called National Reality from Bed that started as a play and finished as a novel and also Black novel with Argentines.

Awards

Ø  1965, winner of the Kraft Award

Ø  1966, winner of thePremio del InstitutoNacional de Cinematografía

Ø  1969, winner of the Fulbright Scholarship (International Writing Program, University of Iowa)

Ø  1972, winner of the Scholarship of Argentine "FondoNacional de lasArtes" for investigations in New York City

Ø  1981/82, winner of the Fellow of the Institute for the Humanities of New York University

Ø  1983, winner of the Guggenheim-Scholarship

Ø  1985, winner of the Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University

Ø  Winner of the Honorary Doctor of University of Knox, Illinois.

Ø  1997, winner of the Medal "Machado de Assis" of Academia Brasilera de Letras

Ø  2004, winner of thePremioAstralba (University of Puerto Rico)

Ø  2011 Elected to be Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Works

Novels

Spanish

Ø  Hay quesonreír. 1966.

Ø  El gatoeficaz. 1972.

Ø  Como en la guerra. 1977.

Ø  Cola de lagartija. 1983.

Ø  Realidadnacionaldesde la cama, 1990, 1993.

Ø  Novelanegra con argentinos. 1990.

Ø  La Travesía. 2001.

Ø  El Mañana. 2010.

Ø  Cuidado con el tigre. 2011.

Ø  La máscarasarda, el profundosecreto de Perón. 2012.

English

Ø  Clara (the novel). 1999.

Ø  The Lizard's Tail (a novel). USA 1983.

Ø  He Who Searches (a novel). 1986.

Ø  Black Novel (with Argentines). 1992.).

Ø  Bedside Manners (a novel). 1995.

Short Stories

Spanish

Ø  Los heréticos. 1967.

Ø  Aquípasancosasraras., 1975 and 1991.

Ø  Libroque no muerde. 1980.

Ø  Cambio de armas, 1982.

Ø  Dondevivenlaságuilas. 1983.

Ø  Simetrías. 1993.

Ø  Antología personal, 1998.

Ø  Cuentoscompletos y unomás. 1999, 2001.

Ø  Simetrías/Cambio de Armas (Luisa Valenzuela y la crítica). 2002.

Ø  El placer rebelde. Antologíageneral., 2003.

Ø  Microrrelatoscompletos hasta hoy. 2004.

Ø  Trilogía de los bajosfondos, 2004.

English

Ø  Clara, 13 short stories and a novel. USA 1976.

Ø  Strange Things Happen Here. 1979

Ø  Other Weapons. 1985.

Ø  Open Door 1988.

Ø  The Censors 1992.

Ø  Symmetries (short stories). 1998.

Ø  "A family for Clotilde", 2006.

Ø  "Blind dates", 2005.

Essays

Spanish

Ø  PeligrosasPalabras. 2001.

Ø  Escritura y Secreto. 2002.

Ø  Los deseososcuros y los otros (cuadernos de New York), 2002.