(Santiago de Chile, 1970) He trained as a Spanish teacher at the Instituto Profesional Blas Cañas and took a Master’s degree in Literature from the University of Chile. He has worked mainly in journalism for the Chilean newspapers La Nación, El Mercurio, La Tercera, El Metropolitano and Las Últimas Noticias, as well as El País and the New York Times. He has contributed to the magazines APSI, Rock & Pop, Fibra, The Clinic (which he also founded) and Mexico’s Letras libres. He has also been an entertainer, screenplay writer and TV programme maker, including Gato por libre (Rock & Pop Televisión, 1995-1998) and the absurdist comedy programme Plan Zeta (Rock & Pop Televisión, 1996-1998). He is the author, among other books, of Invierno en la Torre (1995), Memorias prematuras (1999), Monstruos cardinales (2002), Comedia nupcial (2002), Los platos rotos (2004), Páginas coloniales (2006), La deuda (2009), Mi abuela Marta Rivas (2013) and Milagro en Haití (2015). He is also the author of the play La grabación (2013). His last book is El galán imperfecto (2017). He is an associate lecturer at the Diego Portales University, and works for that institution’s Faculty of Communication and Literature and is director of its Institute of Humour Studies. In 2005 he won the Anne Seghers Prize in Berlin.
Photo: © Daniel Mordzinski