Reina Roffé

Reina Roffé (born November 4, 1951 in Buenos Aires , Argentina ) is an Argentine writer and journalist.

Reina Roffé, 2006

Life

Reine Roffé was born into a Jewish-Italian immigrant family who emigrated to Argentina at the end of the 19th century. Her childhood was shaped by the close relationship with her grandmother Reina Azerrad de Roffé, with whom she spent the first years of life. She began to write stories while she was still at school. At the age of 17 she wrote her first novel, Llamado al Puf , which was published in 1973 and two years later received the “Premio Pondal Ríos”, a literary award given to very young authors.

She studied journalism at the Instituto Superior Mariano Moreno and literature at the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras in Buenos Aires. While still a student she began to publish articles and interviews in newspapers and magazines such as Clarín , La Opinión and Siete Días . In the 1970s, Roffé worked as press manager for the Planeta Argentina publishing house, wrote forewords for the Corregidor publishing house and was the editorial secretary of the Latinoamericana magazine . Her work Juan Rulfo , autobiografía armada , which was later published in book form , also appeared there for the first time .

In 1976, shortly after the beginning of the military dictatorship in Argentina, her second novel Monte de Venus came out; he was banned by the authorities as "immoral" and immediately withdrawn from circulation. During these years the author tried to stay afloat with scholarships and trips abroad. In 1981 she received a Fulbright Scholarship that took her to Iowa; she was involved in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa . She lived in the USA for three and a half years , between 1981 and 1984. She worked on various projects for Ediciones del Norte in New Hampshire ; Among other things, she recorded two interviews with Jorge Luis Borges ( El memorioso , New York, 1982) and Manuel Puig ( Del 'kitsch' a Lacan , New York, 1983) on video.

After the re-establishment of democracy in Argentina, she returned to Buenos Aires in 1984, where she worked on the cultural supplement of La Razón and wrote articles for the women's supplement of the daily newspaper Tiempo Argentino . She also published interviews and stories in the magazine Crisis and was a member of the advisory board of Per Abbat publishing house. In the Biblioteca Alfonsina Storni of the Municipalidad de Buenos Aires she led reading and writing workshops.

In 1987, at the invitation of the Center for Latin American Studies at the Catholic University of Eichstätt , she traveled to Germany to take part in the “Literatura argentina hoy: de la dictadura a la democracia” congress. She then went on a reading tour that took her to Munich , Zurich , Rome , Barcelona and Madrid . In the Spanish capital, the Biblos bookstore made her an offer to run writing workshops, so that she moved there in May 1988. In Spain she worked for the magazines Marie Claire , Cambio 16 and Quimera, among others . At the same time, she worked from 1988 to 1992 as a foreign correspondent for the Argentine magazine Puro Cuento and published articles in the cultural supplements of the Argentine daily newspapers Página 12 and Clarín .

Reina Roffé has been a regular contributor to the Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos magazine and the Centro Virtual Cervantes since 1997 . She also publishes in Spanish literary magazines such as Ínsula and Revista de Occidente as well as in daily newspapers such as La Razón , ABC and El Mundo . For Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos she has edited dossiers on Silvina Ocampo (Madrid, April 2002) and Manuel Puig (April 2003).

Honourings and prices

• Premio Pondal Ríos al mejor libro de autor joven for Llamado al Puf , awarded by the Fundación Odol, Buenos Aires, 1975
• Fulbright Scholarship, University of Iowa International Writing Program, 1981
• Premio Bienal Internacional de Novela Breve para obras en castellano for La rompiente , Municipalidad de Córdoba, Argentina, 1986
• Beca Antorchas de Literatura, Fundación Antorchas, Buenos Aires, 1993

plant

Novels

• Llamado al Puf . Buenos Aires, Editorial Pleamar, 1973.
• Monte de Venus . Buenos Aires, Ediciones Corregidor, 1976.
• La rompiente . Buenos Aires, Editorial Puntosur, 1987. Other editions: Xalapa, México, Editorial Universidad Veracruzana, 1988. Santiago de Chile, Editorial Cuarto Propio, 1999. Córdoba, Argentina, Alción Editora, 2005.
• El cielo dividido . Buenos Aires, Editorial Sudamericana, 1996.
• El otro amor de Federico. Lorca in Buenos Aires . Buenos Aires, Plaza & Janés, 2009.

stories

• Aves exoticas. Cinco cuentos con mujeres raras . Buenos Aires, Editorial Leviatán, Argentina, 2004.
• Mujer en consulta y otros microrrelatos . Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Educación, 2009.

Essays and interview volumes

• Juan Rulfo: Autobiografía Armada , biography. Buenos Aires, Ediciones Corregidor, 1973. Revised. New edition: Barcelona, ​​Editorial Montesinos, 1992.
• Espejo de Escritores , interviews with Latin American authors. New Hampshire, Ediciones del Norte, 1984.
• Conversaciones americanas , interviews with Latin American authors. Madrid, Editorial Páginas de Espuma, 2001.
• Juan Rulfo. Las mañas del zorro , biography of the Mexican author. Madrid, Editorial Espasa Calpe, 2003.
• Juan Rulfo. Biografía no autorizada . Madrid: Editorial Fórcola, 2012.

Translations

German

• "Apocalypse Arlt. The Legacy “(“ Apocalipsis Artl. El legado ”), essay. In: Modernism in the metropolises. Roberto Arlt and Alfred Döblin (International Symposium, Buenos Aires-Berlin, 2004). Edited by Marily Martínez de Richter, Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann, 2007.
• “Exotic birds” (“Aves exóticas”), story. In: Revista Xicóatl , Salzburg, vol. VIII / no. 43, 1999.
• “Migratory Bird” (“Ave de paso”), story. In: Revista Xicóatl , Salzburg, vol. V / no. 23/1996.
• “A city in gray and beige” (“Una ciudad gris y beige”), story. In: Explorations. 21 Narrators from the Río de la Plata . Edited by Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, Volk und Berlin publishing house, 1993.
• “Flood” (“Alta marea”), narrative. In: Do the pearls fall from the moon? Edited by Mempo Giardinelli and Wolfgang Eitel, Munich, Piper, 1991.
• "Romance of Don Gato and Doña Reina of Tétouan". Translated by Erna Pfeiffer . In: ila (Journal of the Latin America Observatory) No. 335, May 2010, pp. 10–12.
• "Exotic birds", in: With eyes in hand: Argentine Jews tell stories . Edited and translated by Erna Pfeiffer. Vienna: Mandelbaum Verlag, 2014, pages 184–188.

English

• “Exotic Birds” (“Aves exóticas”), short story. In: The House of Memory. Stories by Jewish Women Writers of Latin America . Edited by Marjorie Agosín, New York, The Feminist Press, 1999.
• “Revelations” (“Revelaciones”), short story. In: Present Tense , New York, Spring 1985.
• “High Tide” (“Alta marea”), narrative. In: Writing from the World , The International Writing Program 1977-1983. The Iowa Review , Iowa, vol. 14 / no. 2/1984.
• “Let's Hear What He Has To Say” (“Oigamos lo que tiene que decir”), narrative. In: The Web. Stories by Argentine Women . Edited by H. Ernest Lewald, Washington DC, Three Continents Press, 1983.
• The Reef and Exotic Birds: Five Stories with Rare Women. Translated by Margaret Stanton. With an Introduction by Monica Szurmuk. New Orleans: University Press of the South, 2010.

Italian

• L'Onda che si infrange (translated by Giovanna Ferrando, introduction by Luis Dapelo). Bari: Poiesis Editrice, 2010. (La rompiente)
• Uccelli rari ed esotici. Cinque racconti con donne straordinarie . Bari: Poiesis Editrice, 2010. (Aves exóticas. Cinco cuentos con mujeres raras)

literature

• "You have not been able to erase our memories". Jewish-Argentine authors in conversation . Edited and translated by Erna Pfeiffer. Vienna: Löcker-Verlag, 2016 (edition pen, 39)
• Flori, Monica Roy: "Reina Roffé". Streams of Silver: Six Contemporary Women Writers from Artentina. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1995, pp. 215-245.
• Tierney-Tello, Mary Beth: "Reading and Writing a Feminist Poetics: Reina Roffé's La rompiente ", in: Castro-Klarén, Sara (ed.): Narrativa femenina en América Latina: Prácticas y perspectivas teóricas = Latin American Women's Narrative: Practices and Theoretical Perspectives . Madrid / Frankfurt am Main: Iberoamericana / Vervuert, 2003, pp. 277–306.

Web links

• Literature by and about Reina Roffé in the catalog of the Ibero-American Institute of Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin
• Literatura Argentina Contemporánea (biography and text excerpts, in Spanish)
• A Pie de Página Interview by Alicia Plante (in Spanish)