Alejandra Costamagna Crivelli (born 23 March 1970) is a Chilean writer and journalist.
Biography
Costamagna's parents arrived in Chile from Argentina in 1967. Alejandra Costamagna recalls that her first approach to writing was through journal entries that she began to make irregularly from age 10.[1]
It was in her adolescence when she began to take writing more seriously, after entering Francisco Miranda school when she moved to La Reina. There, Professor Guillermo Peréz "recommended her to read Neruda, Mistral, Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky, a book which still marks her writing today." In addition, an interview was arranged and she went to the house of her neighbor Nicanor Parra, with whom she spoke about poetry and insomnia, which both shared.[1]
Academic formation
Alejandra studied journalism at Universidad Diego Portales and frequented the workshops of Guillermo Blanco, Pía Barros, Carlos Cerda, and Antonio Skármeta. Later, she studied for a master's degree in Literature at the University of Chile.
She also received a scholarship from the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa, 2003.
Costamagna maintained in 2011 that she likes silence ("I like this silence half contaminated by the noise of cars, from the city that gets into the distance. It's like being alone, but accompanied. And if I need to talk, I have Pascual."), that she does not want to have children ("The idea of the family composed of mother, father, children, nannies and pets seems to me to be super-enclosed, poor and conservative. Aside from my personal choice not to be a mother, I think having children is super nice."), that she was not worried about having a massive success ("I like that my life is still normal, that writing and publishing is my happiness. I do not want my work to become a race for success, to have to respond to an editorial expectation. I do not see myself like this."), and lamented stereotypes about women ("That women are crying the most and writing with more sentimentality is a stereotype that is very bad for gender equality. And that happens with questions of the duty of women to marry, to have children and to form a happy family.").[1]
Previous jobs
She was editor of the Culture and Entertainment section of the newspaper La Nación. She worked on Rock & Pop radio station, on Gente de mente and Parque Forestal programs, in which she was the radio speaker. In 1996, she published her first novel called En voz baja. In 2000, her book Malas noches was published and in 2013 she published Había una vez un pájaro. Costamagna has taught literary workshops.[3] Also, she has been a theater commentator for national newspapers and magazines, and has worked as a columnist and chronicler for various magazines.[4]
Costamagna published her first novel, En voz baja, in 1996, and followed it two years later with Ciudadano en retiro. Both works received very positive reviews from the writer Roberto Bolaño:
There is a generation of (Chilean) women writers who promise to devour everything. At the head, clearly, two stand out. These are Lina Meruane and Alejandra Costamagna, followed by Nona Fernández and by five or six young women armed with all the implements of good literature.
In 2000 her first book of short stories appeared, Malas noches. Although she has continued to write novels, Costamagna has specially developed the relato [es], so much so that she even reconverted her first novel into one, "Había una vez un pájaro", which appeared in a 2013 book of the same title, accompanied by two other texts. In El Mercurio, Rodrigo Pinto compared this "calling to purify and clean her texts" with that of José Santos González Vera, who used to republish his works with the warning "corrected and diminished edition", but stressed that in Costamagna it acquired a different and even more radical expression.[6]
Her works have been translated into several languages (Italian, French, Danish, Korean) and have been honored with several awards, including the Altazor (2006) and the Anna Seghers-Preis (2008) for the best Latin American author of the year.[4]
Current occupation
Nowadays, Alejandra Costamagna is still a writer and one of her last works is called El sistema del tacto,[7] published in 2018.
Malas noches,[10] short stories, Planeta, 2000. Divided into three sections, containing 15 stories plus an explanatory note about the gestation of the texts:
"Noticias de Japón": "Grasa en la estación", "Violeta azulado", "Donde se congelaba la primavera", "Parcialmente nublado", "Noticias de Japón", and "Grito de Leningrado"
"En el parque": "Sólo un poco, en la mejilla", "Ellos", "Espejo", and "En el parque"
Últimos fuegos,[12] short stories, Ediciones B. 2005. Containing 16 texts:
"Santa Fe", "Coronas vigilantes", "La invención del silencio", "Cuadrar las cosas", "Violeta azulado", "Bombero en las colinas", "El tono de un noble", "Domingos felices", "La epidemia de Traiguén", "La faena", "Noticias de Japón", "Champaña", "El olor de los claveles", "Chufa", "Cigarrillos, el diario, el pan", and "El último incendio"
Naturalezas muertas,[14] long story (as defined by the author);[15] Cuneta, 2010
Animales domésticos,[16] short stories, Mondadori, 2011. Containing 11 stories:
"Yo, Claudio", "Imposible salir de la Tierra", "A las cuatro, a las cinco, a las seis", "Daisy está contigo", "Hambre", "Patanjali", "Hombrecitos", "Pelos", "La epidemia de Traiguén", "El único orden posible, and "Nadie nunca se acostumbra"
Cruce de peatones,[17] chronicles, interviews, and profiles, selection by Julieta Marchant; Ediciones UDP [es], 2012
Había una vez un pájaro,[18] three short stories, Cuneta, 2013. Contains "Nadie nunca se acostumbra", the micro-tale "Agujas de reloj", the titular story, and a final explanatory note by the author, entitled "En voz baja"
Imposible salir de la Tierra, ten short stories that date back to the years 2005–2015; six published in books and magazines, four unpublished.[19][20] Almadía (Mexico)/Estruendomudo [es] CL, 2016
Finalist for the 2012 Altazor Award with Animales domésticos
References
^ abcSalinas T., Juan Luis (14 June 2011). "'No quiero que mi trabajo sea una carrera por el éxito'" ['I do not want my job to be a race for success']. Ya (in Spanish).
^Bolaño, Roberto (February 1999). "Fragmentos de regreso a un país natal" [Fragments of Return To a Native Country]. Paula (in Spanish). No. 192. pp. 98–101.
^Pinto, Rodrigo (26 October 2013). "Había una vez un pájaro" [Once Upon a Time There Was a Bird]. El Mercurio (in Spanish). Retrieved 17 October 2017.
