Daniel Samper Pizano


Daniel Samper Pizano is a Colombian lawyer, journalist, and prolific writer.

Career

Samper attended the Gimnasio Moderno, where he began writing in the students newspaper El Aguilucho. At the age of 19 he worked for the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo as a reporter. After graduating from high school, Samper studied law in the Pontifical Xavierian University and later attended graduate school for journalism at Kansas University, United States. He was also awarded the Nieman Fellowship by Harvard University. Since then he has been an editor, columnist and author of some 38 books, TV and movie screenwriter and winner of numerous recognitions and awards in Colombia and abroad; Among these, the Maria Moors Cabot prize given by Columbia University, the "Rey de España" prize and has won three times the Colombian "Simón Bolívar Prize for Journalism".
His writings are notable for having a wide and soft sense of humor mixed with some social criticism. He writes a column for El Tiempo called "Cambalache" and the magazine Carrusel with a humor section called "Postre de notas", as well as some articles written for Colombian magazines such as El Malpensante, Revista Semana and Gatopardo. In Colombia, Samper is also considered the father of Colombian investigative journalism after his work as a reporter for El Tiempo newspaper.
Since 1986 Samper has resided in Madrid; he was an editor of the Spanish magazine Cambio 16. He is also a member of the Academia Colombiana de la Lengua. As a TV screenwriter he wrote scripts for the Colombian TV series Dejémonos de vainas during the 1980s and 1990s.

Personal life

Daniel was born in Bogotá on 8 June 1945 to Andrés Samper Gnecco and Helena Pizano Pardo, the eldest of five children, his other siblings were, Ernesto, José Gabriel, Juan Francisco, and María Fernanda. He married Cecilia Ospina Cuéllar, with whom he had three children, Juanita, María Angélica, and Daniel. He later divorced and married Pilar Tafur in 1974.

Selected works