Jorge Marchant Lazcano
Encyclopedia
Jorge Marchant Lazcano is a Chilean writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

, playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

, screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...

, novelist and journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

. He was born in Santiago
Santiago, Chile
Santiago , also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile, and the center of its largest conurbation . It is located in the country's central valley, at an elevation of above mean sea level...

, (Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

) on March 9, 1950.

He is the son of Jorge Marchant Montalva and María Ester Lazcano Cuevas. He had a religious, conservative and very formal education of which Jorge partially untied, when he began to study journalism at the Universidad de Chile in 1969.

Start in the literature

His first literary contributions were published by Editorial Quimantú, a former publishing house of Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

. Very soon he discovered a new form of literature that helped him to write La Beatriz Ovalle, his first novel, published in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...

, Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

 in 1977. That book became later one of the biggest successes of Chilean publications, although the coup d'état of General Augusto Pinochet
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, more commonly known as Augusto Pinochet , was a Chilean army general and dictator who assumed power in a coup d'état on 11 September 1973...

 was a hard misfortune for the culture and literature of this country.

A writer with strength

His first job as a journalist was for Revista Paula, a magazine dedicated to the women's world. Simultaneously he wrote literary reviews for the evening newspaper La Segunda, but his vocation as a journalist did not consolidate and in the eighties Televisión Nacional de Chile, a TV channel from Santiago
Santiago, Chile
Santiago , also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile, and the center of its largest conurbation . It is located in the country's central valley, at an elevation of above mean sea level...

, hired him as a screenwriter. In the meantime he published two new titles, La noche que nunca ha gestado el día, a short novel (1982), and Matar a la dama de las camelias, a short fiction book (1986). He also released two new theater plays during those years: Gabriela (1981), about the life of Gabriela Mistral
Gabriela Mistral
Gabriela Mistral was the pseudonym of Lucila de María del Perpetuo Socorro Godoy Alcayaga, a Chilean poet, educator, diplomat, and feminist who was the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1945...

, the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...

, and Última Edición (1983), an ironic portrait of his journalistic participation in the Revista Paula magazine. Many of his tales were included in Chilean and international anthologies. One of his most important achievements was his inclusion in the book My Deep Dark Pain Is Love, an anthology of gay narrative, published by Gay Sunshine Press in San Francisco, where he appears along with authors such as Manuel Puig
Manuel Puig
Manuel Puig was an Argentine author...

, Reinaldo Arenas
Reinaldo Arenas
Reinaldo Arenas was a Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright who despite his early sympathy for the 1959 revolution, grew critical of and then rebelled against the Cuban government.- Life :...

 and Luis Zapata.

Screenwriter of television series

Being a television series writer was not widely admired or highly regarded during those years and Jorge Marchant was strongly criticized for working in this field. In spite of this, his work opened the door for other writers willing to start in the budding industry of television. His most relevant creation during that stage was Volver a empezar (1990). During the nineties Jorge Marchant wrote many television series that are considered classics in the genre. He also built the foundations for a television playwright of wide repercussions in Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

.

Successful return to the world of literature

In 1999 he released a new drama named No me pidas la luna and in 2002 Marchant published the historical novel Me parece que no somos felices, followed by La joven de blanco (2004). This was followed by Sangre como la mía (2006), for which he received the Altazor National Arts award in Chile. His most recent creation is the novel El amante sin rostro.

Although Jorge Marchant officially lives in Santiago
Santiago, Chile
Santiago , also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile, and the center of its largest conurbation . It is located in the country's central valley, at an elevation of above mean sea level...

, the capital city of Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

, he spends more or less half of the year in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, with a complete dedication to the job of writing.

Works

Published books
  • La Beatriz Ovalle
  • La noche que nunca ha gestado el día
  • Matar a la dama de las Camelias
  • Me parece que no somos felices
  • La joven de blanco
  • Sangre como la mía
  • El amante sin rostro


Participation in anthologies
  • My Deep Dark Pain Is Love


Playwright
  • Gabriela
  • Última Edición
  • No me pidas la luna


Awards
  • Premio Altazor de Novela – Versión 2007

External links

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