Alejandra Costamagna

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]

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 has collaborated in the magazines Gatopardo, Rolling Stone, and El Malpensante. In 1994, she obtained a FONDART grant to write her first novel.[2]

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]

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 at FILSA 2015

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.

— Roberto Bolaño, February 1999[5]

In 2000 her first book of short stories appeared, Malas noches. Although she has continued to write novels, Costamagna has specially developed the relato, 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]

Nowadays, Alejandra Costamagna is still a writer and one of her last works is called El sistema del tacto,[7] published in 2018.

• Juegos literarios Gabriela Mistral awards for En voz baja (1996)
• Premio Municipal de Literatura for En voz baja (1997)
• Fondart Grant to write her first novel (1994)
• Finalist for the 2001 Altazor Award with Malas noches
• Finalist for the 2002 Planeta Argentina Award with Cansado ya del sol
• Finalist for the 2003 Altazor Award with Cansado ya del sol
• International Writing Program Scholarship from the University of Iowa (2003)
• Altazor Award for Últimos fuegos (2006)
• Art Critics' Circle Award for Dile que no estoy (2007)
• Finalist for the 2008 Altazor Award with Dile que no estoy
• Anna Seghers-Preis - German literary award (2008)
• 2009 Best Literary Works Award in the Unpublished Work category from the National Book and Reading Council for Animales domésticos
• Finalist for the 2012 Altazor Award with Animales domésticos

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