Argentine novelist and academic
Mempo Giardinelli (born August 2, 1947) is an Argentine novelist and academic, author of numerous books, including novels, essay collections, and short story collections.[1]
Biography
Giardinelli was born in Resistencia, Chaco Province. He enrolled at the National University of the Northeast, in neighboring Corrientes, in 1964. He enrolled in Law School, but left his law studies in 1969 to pursue writing and journalism. Giardinelli emigrated to Mexico following the March 1976 coup in Argentina; there, he taught journalism at the Ibero-American University from 1978 to 1984, and contributed to Mexico City-based business magazines Expansión and Forum.[2] He became the first foreign writer to win Mexico's National Novelists' Prize in 1983 for his thriller, Luna Caliente.[3]
Following elections in 1983 Giardinelli returned to Argentina. His novel Luna Caliente, a romantic thriller set in subtropical Corrientes during a heat wave, was adapted into film in 1985. He worked as Assistant Director at Playboy Magazine Argentina until 1985, covered the historic Trial of the Juntas, and later became a regular contributor to Página/12. Giardinelli founded a literary review, Puro Cuento ('Pure Fiction'), in 1986, and edited the review until its closure in 1992.[4] He won the 1993 Rómulo Gallegos Prize (Venezuela) for his novel Santo Oficio de la Memoria.[3]
Giardinelli taught journalism in a number of universities, including the National University of La Plata (1989-94), the National University of the Northeast, and as visiting professor at among others the University of Virginia (from 1988) and the University of California, San Diego (2002-07). He served in the advisory councils of both the Ministry of Education's Reading Promotion Plan (from 2004) and Transparency International (2005-08). He was awarded an honorary doctorate at the University of Poitiers in 2007.[5] Giardinelli relocated to his native Resistencia in 1995, where he established a foundation in his name in 1996 with 10,000 volumes donated from his personal library.[5][6]
