María Granata (born 3 September 1923) is an Argentine author and poet.

Life and career

Granata was born on 3 September 1923, in the

Balvanera Balvanera is a Barrios of Buenos Aires, barrio or neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Origin of name and alternative names The official name, Balvanera, is the name of the ''parroquia'' (parish) centered around the church of ''Nuestra Seño ...

neighborhood of the city of

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...

. She began writing as a very young girl, encouraged by her father, an Italian doctor who introduced her to

Leopardi Count Giacomo Taldegardo Francesco di Sales Saverio Pietro Leopardi (29 June 1798 – 14 June 1837) was an Italian philosopher, poet, essayist, and philologist. Considered the greatest Italian poet of the 19th century and one of the greatest a ...

's poetry and who died when she was 11 years old. She recounts that it was during her adolescence when she read the most and that later the fervent "''re-readings''" attracted her the most and that since then she was subjugated by Quevedo,

San Juan de la Cruz St. John of the Cross (; ; né Juan de Yepes y Álvarez; 24 June 1542 – 14 December 1591) was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest, mystic, and Carmelite friar of ''Converso'' ancestry. He is a major figure of the Counter-Reformation in Spain, ...

Walt Whitman Walter Whitman Jr. (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, and journalist; he also wrote two novels. He is considered one of the most influential poets in American literature and world literature. Whitman incor ...

and, in narrative,

Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. () was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. He is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in both Russian and world literature, and many of his works are considered highly influenti ...

Faulkner William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer. He is best known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in for Lafayette County where he s ...

and

Juan Rulfo Juan Nepomuceno Carlos Pérez Rulfo Vizcaíno, best known as Juan Rulfo (; 16 May 1917 – 7 January 1986), was a Mexican writer, screenwriter, and photographer. He is best known for two literary works, the 1955 novel ''Pedro Páramo'', and the ...

. In 1942, at the age of 21, a few months after settling in the San Vicente District, a semi-rural area 45 kilometers from

, where she continued to live, the publishing house "''Conducta''", directed by Leónidas Barletta, published her first book on poetry ''Umbral de tierra'', for which she was awarded the Municipal Prize and the Martín Fierro Prize. The work, in which some critics saw the influence of

Leopoldo Lugones Leopoldo Antonio Lugones Argüello (13 June 1874 – 18 February 1938) was an Argentine poet, essayist, novelist, playwright, historian, professor, translator, biographer, philologist, theologian, diplomat, politician and journalist. His poetic ...

and

Horacio Rega Molina Horacio Rega Molina (1899 – 24 October 1957) was an Argentine poet specialized in sonnets, journalist, teacher, and dramatist. He worked as a literary critic in the newspaper ''El Mundo (Argentina), El Mundo''.

while others "''rescued the song of a girl who was emotionally poured out before the conspiracy of beings animated or not, with expressive fullness and lyrical nobility.''" Her next work, also of poems, was ''Death of the Adolescent'' (1946), chosen that year by the Book of the Month Club. In 1952 she published ''Corazón cavado'' which prompted the critic Luis Soler Cañas to write. Other of her poetic works are ''Human Color'' (1966) and ''Los tumultos'' (1974). Regarding the latter, she says that she had always felt the drama of the family clan destined to dismember and that suddenly, without having expressly proposed it, one day she found herself giving literary form to the subject. In her novels she approaches the imaginative and baroque of models such as those of

García Márquez García or Garcia may refer to: People * García (surname) * Kings of Pamplona/Navarre ** García Íñiguez of Pamplona, king of Pamplona 851/2–882 ** García Sánchez I of Pamplona, king of Pamplona 931–970 ** García Sánchez II of Pamp ...

. The best known, ''Los viernes de la eternidad ('' 1971), earned her the Emecé Award and the Argentine National Literature Award. Granata says that she had never thought of writing a novel until one morning when the character of the ghost who comes looking for his wife, the scene with the nails and the ending suddenly occurred to her; that same afternoon she began to write it and continued it for eleven months. Other novels are ''The Getaway'', ''The Jubilant Extermination'' (1979) and ''The Sun of the Times.'' Granata

turned 100 A centenarian is a person who has reached the age of 100. Because life expectancies at birth worldwide are well below 100, the term is invariably associated with longevity. The United Nations estimated that there were 316,600 living centenarian ...

in September 2023.

References

{{Authority control 1923 births Living people 20th-century Argentine poets 20th-century Argentine women writers Argentine women writers Argentine women poets Writers from Buenos Aires