Nélida Piñon

Nélida Piñon studied at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. The recorded working language is Spanish and Portuguese. Work by Nélida Piñon is recorded in the collections of Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes. Distinctions recorded are Princess of Asturias Literary Prize, Castelao Medal, Casa de las Américas Prize and FIL Award.

Nélida Cuiñas Piñon was born in 1937 in the middle class Vila Isabel area of Rio de Janeiro to Olivia Carmen Cuíñas Piñón, a homemaker and Lino Piñón Muíños, a merchant. Her mother was the child of Galician immigrants, her father a first generation Galician immigrant. She studied at the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro before working as a journalist for the newspaper O Globo and the magazine Cadernos Brasileiros. She has taught writing in workshops and institutions including Columbia University, Johns Hopkins and the University of Miami, where she had been the Stanford Professor of Humanities. She also gave courses on creative writing at the Faculty of Letters of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. In 2015, she assumed the José Bonifácio chair at the University of São Paulo, teaching courses at Ibero-American imaginary. Her first novel was Guia-Mapa de Gabriel Arcanjo (The Guidebook of Archangel Gabriel), written in 1961. It concerns a protagonist discussing Christian doctrine with her guardian angel. In the 1970s, she became noted for erotic novels A casa de paixão (The House of Passion), published in 1972, and A força do destino (The Force of Destiny), published in 1977. In 1984, she had perhaps her greatest success with A República dos Sonhos (The Republic of Dreams). The work involves generations of a family from Galicia, who emigrated to Brazil, which stemmed from her own family's experience. Among other distinctions, Piñon was awarded the 1995 FIL Award and the 2005 Prince of Asturias Award for literature. She also was the President of Academia Brasileira de Letras (Brazilian Academy of Letters) from 1996 to 1997, and occupied the José Bonifácio Chair of Iberoamerican Affairs of the University of São Paulo in 2015. She received Spanish citizenship in 2021 from the Royal Decree. Piñon died on 17 December 2022, at the age of 85, in Lisbon.

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