Alejandra Costamagna


Alejandra Costamagna Crivelli is a Chilean writer and journalist.
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Early life

Costamagna's parents arrived in Chile from Argentina in 1967. She recalls that her first approach to writing was through journal entries that she began to make irregularly from age 10.
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.
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.

Career

She has collaborated in the magazines Gatopardo, Rolling Stone, and El Malpensante. In 1994, she obtained a FONDART grant to write her first novel.
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.
She published her first novel, En voz baja, in 1996, and followed it two years later with Ciudadano en retiro. Both works received positive reviews from the writer Roberto Bolaño:
In 2000 her first book of short stories appeared, Malas noches. Although she has continued to write novels, Costamagna has specially developed the , 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.
She also received a scholarship from the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa, 2003.
Her works have been translated into several languages and have been honored with several awards, including the Altazor and the Anna Seghers-Preis for the best Latin American author of the year.
Costamagna has taught literary workshops. Also, she has been a theater commentator for national newspapers and magazines, and has worked as a columnist and chronicler for various magazines.
Her latest novel El sistema del tacto was published in 2018.

Personal life

Costamagna maintained in 2011 that she likes silence, that she does not want to have children, that she was not worried about having a massive success, and lamented stereotypes about women.

Awards and distinctions

Works

Books

En voz baja, novel, LOM Ediciones, 1996Ciudadano en retiro, novel, Planeta, 1998Malas noches, short stories, Planeta, 2000. Divided into three sections, containing 15 stories plus an explanatory note about the gestation of the texts:
  • * "Veintiséis dientes": "Boca abierta", "Micro", "Buenaventura", "Sin voz", and "Veintiséis dientes"
  • * "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"Cansado ya del sol, novel, Planeta, 2002Últimos fuegos, 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"Dile que no estoy, novel, Planeta, 2007Naturalezas muertas, long story ; Cuneta, 2010Animales domésticos, 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, chronicles, interviews, and profiles, selection by Julieta Marchant;, 2012Había una vez un pájaro, 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. Almadía / CL, 2016

Stories in collective publications

  • Música ligera.
  • Salidas de madre.
  • Voces de Eros.
  • Cuentos extraviados.
  • Líneas aéreas.
  • Volver a verla y otros cuentos.
  • Con pasión.
  • Se habla español.
  • Ecos urbanos.
  • Historias de mente.
  • Cuentos chilenos contemporáneos.
  • Uno en quinientos.
  • Young Writing from Young Writers of the World.
  • Alucinaciones TXT.
  • Narrativa chilena actual: 28 narradores meridionales.
  • Dios es Chileno.
  • Maldito amor.
  • Porotos granados.
  • Sube a la alcoba por la ventana.
  • Las mujeres cuentan.
  • Junta de vecinas.
  • Los malditos.
  • Cl. Textos de fronteras.
  • Volver a los 17.
  • Selección chilena.
  • Poliamor.
  • El río y la ciudad.