Nélida Piñon


Nélida Piñon is a Brazilian author and professor. Piñon "is considered among the foremost writers in Brazil today".

Life

Piñon was born in 1937 in Rio de Janeiro. Her parents were Galician immigrants. She studied at the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro before working as a journalist for the newspaper O Globo and the magazine Cadernos Brasileiros. She has taught writing in workshops and at institutions including Columbia University, Johns Hopkins and the University of Miami, where she has been the Stanford Professor of Humanities.
Her first novel was Guia-Mapa de Gabriel Arcanjo, written in 1961, it concerns a protagonist discussing Christian doctrine with her guardian angel. In the 1970s, she became noted for erotic novels A casa de paixão and A força do destino, written in 1977.
In 1984, she had her perhaps greatest success with A Republica dos Sonhos,. The work involves generations of a family from Galicia who emigrated to Brazil, which relates to her own family's experience.
Among other distinctions, Piñon was awarded the 1995 FIL Award and the 2005 Prince of Asturias Award for literature. She also was the President of Academia Brasileira de Letras from 1996 to 1997, and occupied the José Bonifácio Chair of Iberoamerican Affairs of the University of São Paulo in 2015.

Books