Luisa Valenzuela (born 1938) is an Argentine writer of both fiction and journalistic works. She is among her nation's most significant writers, best known for the style of writing that blends magical and fantastic elements into prose known as magical realism, a style often associated with Latin-American writers such as Gabriel García Marquez and Julio Cortazar. Valenzuela is also one of the most widely translated female South American writers. As Naomi Lindstrom wrote in World Literature Today, Valenzuela "has created numerous narratives in which authoritarian rule in society is mirrored by patriarchal domination in relations between men and women."

Luisa Valenzuela was born November 26, 1938, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to parents Pablo Francisco Valenzuela, a physician, and Luisa Mercedes Levinson, a writer of note in Argentina. Valenzuela, an insatiable reader since childhood, attended a British school in her youth.

Began Journalism Career as a Teen

Given her parents'...