Diamela Eltit

Diamela Eltit (born 1947, Santiago de Chile) is a well known Chilean writer and university professor. Between 1966 and 1976 she graduated in Spanish studies at the Universidad Católica de Chile and followed graduate studies in Literature at the Universidad de Chile in Santiago. In 1977 she began a career as Spanish and literature teacher at high school level in several public schools in Santiago, such as the Instituto Nacional and the Liceo Carmela Carvajal. In 1984 she started teaching at universities in Chile, where she is currently professor at the Universidad Tecnológica Metropolitana and abroad. During the last thirty years Eltit has lectured and participated in conferences, seminars and literature events throughout the world, in Europe, Africa, North and Latin America. She has been several times visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and also at Johns Hopkins University, Stanford University, Washington University at Saint Louis, University of Pittsburgh, University of Virginia and, since 2007, New York University, where she holds a teaching appointment as Distinguished Global Visiting Professor and teaches at the Creative Writing Program in Spanish. In the academic year 2014-2015 Eltit was invited by Cambridge University, U.K., to the Simon Bolivar Chair at the Center of Latin American Studies. Since 2014 Diamela Eltit´s personal and literary archives are deposited at the University of Princeton. Through her career several hundreds of Latin American young writers have participated as students at her highly appreciated literature workshops.

Contents

• Diamela eltit festival isla 2014 instituto cervantes de dubl n
• Diamela eltit vaca sagrada cubacartel
• References

In 1973, after the military coup, Eltit decided to stay in Chile. during this period she started publishing her first manuscripts. When democracy returned in 1990 she was culture attaché at the Chilean Embassy in Mexico till 1994. During several periods she has been representative of the Council of Chilean Universities to the Book National Council, where policies with regard to book publishing and reading practices are defined and promoted. She has written for many journals and newspaper. Most recently she collaborated for several year in The Clinic and now 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.

En 1980 Eltit published her first book, Una milla de cruces sobre el pavimento, a volume of essays. Her first novel, Lumpérica, appeared in 1983 in Ediciones del Ornitorrinco, a small editorial house from Santiago. The text dedicated to Eltit in the internet cultural portal Memoria Chilena, explains that 1980 decade was specially 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".

Since then Diamela Eltit has continued publishing novels and essays until today. Several of her novels have been presented on the stage by different theater groups in several countries. Also several have been published in Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Spain, and in other languages as English, French, finish, Greek, Italian and, in the near future, Portuguese. In 2012 the Spanish editorial house Periférica reached an agreement with Diamela Eltit to republish all her novels.

Three Eltit novels were chosen as part of the list selected in 2007 by 81 latinamerican 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 has been mentioned for the Premio Nacional de Literatura de Chile, but she has rejected self-promotion and the system of candidates presentation.

Eltit work has been object of many studies, in Spanish and other languages. 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, former President of the Socialist Party, that in 2009 was presidential candidate representing a coalition between the Communist Party and socialist, humanist and Christian left groups.

Prizes and Fellowships

Works

Some bibliography