Hernán Rivera Letelier wins Chile’s National Literature Prize 2022

Writer Hernán Rivera Letelier has won Chile’s 2022 National Prize for Literature, the country’s highest award for writers who have distinguished themselves through their excellence, creativity, and contribution in the field of literature, the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage announced Thursday.

“The stories of the pampas and the desert are significant in Chile’s history, which has been forgotten, which makes some political sectors uncomfortable, which is full of social, moral and labor nuances, full of massacres and the likes,” the author said after receiving the award after contacting the Chilean ministry.

Rivera Letelier added that he has dug up the stories and passed them on to new generations, “not only in my country but all over the world. I am very grateful for the response my books have received.

The Chilean Minister of Culture, Arts, and Heritage, Julieta Brodsky, stressed that one of the decisive criteria is the transversality of Hernán Rivera Letelier, who has managed to attract new readers and penetrate different sectors of society with his work, she said.

“The fact that he is someone who so vividly represents a territory and a geography of the country and has managed to communicate this both in Chile and abroad was also a priority,” she said. Moreover, it is a person of such importance that he deserved this recognition for which he had been nominated before,” added Brodsky.

Rivera Letelier was born in Talca (in southern Chile) in 1950 and is one of the most widely read contemporary Chilean authors. According to the Chilean Ministry of Culture, 21 books have been published and translated into more than 21 languages.

Rivera Letelier spent his childhood in the offices of the Algorta, María Elena, and Pedro de Valdivia saltpeter plants in the Chilean desert, in the north of the country, and later his youth in Antofagasta, in the same area.

The Chilean government declared that the author had succeeded in portraying and saving the world of the saltpeter mines and the country’s north, earning him great national and international recognition.

The National Prize for Literature, created in 1942, is awarded every two years to native writers who, through their contribution to art and culture, have enriched Chilean history through their works’ excellence, development, and creativity.

Among the laureates are Nobel Prize winners Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral, as well as Nicanor Parra, Raúl Zurita and Mapuche poet Elicura Chihuailaf.