Elena Poniatowska

Vocation

Notable

Mexican journalist and author, specializing in works on social and political issues focused on those considered to be disenfranchised especially women and the poor. She was born in Paris to upper class parents, including her mother whose family fled Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. She left France for Mexico when she was ten to escape the Second World War. When she was eighteen and without a university education, she began writing for the newspaper Excélsior, doing interviews and society columns. Despite the lack of opportunity for women from the 1950s to the 1970s, she evolved to writing about social and political issues in newspapers, books in both fiction and nonfiction form. Her best known work is La noche de Tlatelolco (The night of Tlatelolco, the English translation was titled "Massacre in Mexico") about the repression of the 1968 student protests in Mexico City. She is considered to be “Mexico's grande dame of letters” and is still an active writer. In 2013, she won Spain's Premio Cervantes Literature Award, the greatest existing Spanish language literature award for an author's lifetime works, being the 4th woman to receive such recognition. following Maria Zambrano (1988), Dulce Maria Loynaz (1992), and Ana Maria Matute (2010). Elena Poniatowska was awarded the Premio Cervantes due to her "brilliant literary trajectory in diverse genera, her special style in narrative and her exemplary dedication to journalism, her outstanding work and her firm commitment to contemporary history." Link to Wikipedia biography