Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) was born Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto in Parral, Chile. He started publishing his poems in 1920, taking the pen name of Pablo Neruda, after his heroes Paul Verlaine and Czech poet Jan Neruda. He spent much of his adult life either in exile or in diplomatic posts under favourable Chilean governments. Philippe Noiret played him in the film "Il Postino", set in Italy during his exile there. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971. He was close to President Salvador Allende, but in hospital with cancer at the time of the coup d'etat led by Augusto Pinochet. His funeral a fortnight later became the first public protest against the Chilean military dictatorship.
Marjorie Agosín (b. 1955) is a Chilean-American writer who has been honored by the United Nations for her work.
Born in Argentina in 1942, Ariel Dorfman spent ten years as a child in New York, until his family was forced out of the United States by the anti-communist frenzy stirred by Joe McCarthy. The Dorfmans ended up in Chile, where Ariel spent his adolescence and youth, living through the Allende revolution and the subsequent resistance inside Chile, and abroad after the dictatorship that overthrew Allende in 1973. Accompanied by his wife Angélica, he wandered the globe as an exile, finally settling in the United States, where he is now Walter Hines Emeritus Professor of Literature at Duke University. Dorfman’s work, which includes the acclaimed play and film “Death and the Maiden,” and the classic text about cultural imperialism, How to Read Donald Duck, covers almost every genre available (plays, novels, short stories, fiction, essays, journalism, opinion pieces, memoirs, and screenplays). His award-winning books have been published in more than fifty languages and his plays performed in over one hundred countries. He contributes regularly to major publications including The New York Times and The New York Review of Books and remains deeply committed to campaigning in defense of human rights.
