María Paz Rodríguez was born on August 8, 1981, in Santiago, Chile. She studied literature and completed a Master's in Latin American Literature at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. In 2011, she debuted with her first novel, El Gran Hotel (Editorial Cuarto Propio), which received very good critical reception, also winning the Literary Creation Grant from the Book Council. Then, in 2015, she published Mala Madre (Editorial Alfaguara), a novel that led her to participate in the "Latinoamérica Viva" panel at the FIL Guadalajara 2015 and the Lima Book Fair as a guest of honor. Furthermore, Mala Madre is now in its third edition. In 2018, she published her first book of short stories, Niñas ricas (Editorial Alfaguara), where, like in her other books, she proposes a pop aesthetic intersected with feminism and the problematic place of women in contemporary Chile. This book reached a more massive audience and had two editions in less than three months.
In 2015, she founded the publishing house Neón Ediciones, where she works to this day. She has published authors such as Pola Oloixarac, Paulina Flores, Carmen García, and Francisco Ángeles, as well as translations of Mary Shelley, George Eliot, and Henry David Thoreau, among others.
She currently works as an academic in the Master of Creative Writing at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez and has served as a judge for the literary contests "Antofagasta en 100 palabras" and "Iquique en 100 palabras" by Fundación Plagio; "Nuevas letras sub 30" by the Providencia Cultural Foundation, and "Mujeres Protagonistas" by the Ministry of Women. ARCA is her fourth novel and will be published by Tusquets in 2024 in Chile.
Literary Genres: contemporary fiction
Published at: Alfaguara (Chile) - Cuarto Propio (Chile) - Tusquets
Antonia Kerrigan