Luisa Valenzuela, born in Buenos Aires, has worked as a journalist for print & radio since the age of 17 (in France, where she met members of the nouveau roman movement), & published her first novel, Clara. She has traveled extensively through Latin America, and lived in New York, Barcelona, & Paris for many years. Facing censorship during what became the Dirty Little War (which resulted in much of her best known work), she moved to New York where she was Resident Writer at the Center for Interamerican Relations at N.Y. & Columbia University, where she taught writing workshops & seminars for 10 years; member of the NY Inst. for the Humanities, at the Fund for Free Expression; member of the Freedom to Write Committee of the PEN American Center. She has received the 1997 Medal "Machado de Assis" of Academia Brasilera de Letras, University of Puerto Rico's 2004 Premio Astralba, as well as Guggenheim & Fullbright fellowships. In 1989 she returned to Buenos Aires, but still travels extensively. Much of her writing combines a powerful critique of dictatorship with an examination hierarchical & patriarchal social organizations from a feminist perspective.