Luis Sepúlveda

Luis Sepúlveda studied at University of Chile and Instituto Nacional General José Miguel Carrera. The recorded working language is Portuguese, English and French. The field of work recorded is creative and professional writing, Chilean literature and opinion journalism. Residence is recorded at Chile and Europe. Works named in the authority record are The Old Man Who Read Love Stories. Distinctions recorded are Tigre Juan award, Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, Premio Chiara and Alcalá City Awards.

• Born — 4 October 1949 • Birthplace — Ovalle, Limarí Province, Chile • Died — 16 April 2020 • Place of death — Oviedo, Asturias, Spain • Education — University of Chile • Occupation — Writer, journalist

Luis Sepúlveda was born in Ovalle, Limarí Province, Chile in 1949. His father, José Sepúlveda, was a militant of the Chilean Communist Party; and his mother, Irma Calfucura, was a nurse of Mapuche descent. After High School in Santiago, he studied theatre production at the National University of Chile. He joined the Communist Party when he was 12 years old, and expelled from it in 1968. Luis Sepúlveda was politically active first as a leader of the student movement and in the Salvador Allende administration in the department of cultural affairs where he was in charge of a series of cheap editions of classics for the general public. He also acted as a mediator between the government and Chilean companies. After the Chilean coup of 1973 which brought to power General Augusto Pinochet he was jailed for two-and-a-half years and then obtained a conditional release through the efforts of the German branch of Amnesty International and was kept under house arrest. He managed to escape and went underground for nearly a year. With the help of a friend who was head of the Alliance française in Valparaíso he set up a drama group that became the first cultural focus of resistance. He was rearrested and given a life sentence (later reduced to twenty-eight years) for treason and subversion. • Illustration — Luis Sepúlveda in 2009 The German section of Amnesty International intervened again and his prison sentence was commuted to eight years of exile, and in 1977 he left Chile to fly to Sweden where he was supposed to teach Spanish literature. At the first stopover in Buenos Aires he escaped and managed to enter Uruguay. Because the political situations in both Argentina and Uruguay were similar to those in his home country, Sepúlveda went to São Paulo in Brazil and then to Paraguay. He had to leave again because of the local regime and finally settled in Quito in Ecuador guest of his friend Jorge Enrique Adoum. He directed the Alliance Française theatre, founded a theatrical company and took part in a UNESCO expedition to assess the impact of colonization on the Shuar people. During the expedition he shared the life of the Shuars for seven months and came to an understanding of Latin America as a multicultural and multilingual continent where the Marxism he was taught was not applicable to a rural population that was dependent on its surrounding natural environment. He worked in close contact with organizations of the Indigenous people and drafted the first literacy teaching plan for the Imbabura peasants' federation, in the Andes. In 1979, he joined the Simón Bolívar International Brigade which was fighting in Nicaragua and after the victory of the revolution he started working as a journalist and one year later he left for Europe. He went to Hamburg in Germany because of his admiration of German literature (he learned the language in prison) especially the romantics such as Novalis and Friedrich Hölderlin and worked there as journalist traveling widely in Latin America and Africa. • Illustration — Sepúlveda in Italy, 2013 In 1982, he came in contact with Greenpeace and worked until 1987 as a crew member on one of their ships. He later acted as coordinator between various branches of the organization. His environmental activism then continued after he left Greenpeace. For example, he was a strong advocate for environmental protection in his beloved Patagonia, the subject of some of his most popular works. In 1988 he won the Tigre Juan Award for his novel Un viejo que leía novelas de amor, and in 2009 he won the Premio Primavera de Novela for his novel La sombra de lo que fuimos. He wrote novels, children's books, and travel guides. He was also a film writer and director. On March 1, 2020, after returning from a conference in Portugal, he was confirmed as the first man in the Asturias region of Spain to be infected by COVID-19. By March 11, it was reported that Sepúlveda was in critical condition, that he was in an induced coma with assisted breathing due to multiple organ failure in an Oviedo hospital. He died on April 16 due to the virus. Sepúlveda had six children, one girl and five boys, three of them born during his time in Hamburg. At the time of his death, he was married to the Chilean poet Carmen Yáñez; they had married in 1968, separated in 1971, resumed their life together in 1997 and remarried in 2004. She has written a book about their life together, Un amore fuori dal tempo – La mia vita con Lucho.

• Vivir a los 17, 1986 director and writer • Lucky and Zorba, 1998 writer • Tierra del fuego, 2000 screenplay • The Old Man Who Read Love Stories, 2001 writer • Nowhere, 2002 director and writer • Corazón verde, 2002 writer

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His recorded languages were Portuguese, English, Italian and German. He married Carmen Yáñez.

Luis Sepúlveda worked in creative and professional writing, Chilean literature, opinion journalism and film direction. He worked at Chile and Europe.