Luisa Valenzuela Levinson (born November 26, 1938) is an Argentine writer known for her work after the Boom period in literature. She writes novels and short stories that use unusual methods to explore unfair systems in society from a woman's point of view.

Her most famous works were written in response to the military government in Argentina during the 1970s. Books such as Como en la guerra (1977), Cambio de armas (1982), and Cola de lagartija (1983) discuss the problems of the government while also looking at systems where men have more power and how relationships between men and women affect power in society.

Biography

Luisa Valenzuela Levinson was born on November 26, 1938, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her parents were Pablo Francisco Valenzuela, a doctor, and Luisa Mercedes Levinson, a writer. She grew up in a home where many famous writers, including Adolfo Bioy Casares, Jorge Luis Borges, and Ernesto Sabato, often visited. Although she was interested in science as a young person, she began writing for newspapers such as Atlántida, El Hogar, and Esto Es at age 17. She also worked for Radio Belgrano.

At age 20, Luisa married Theodore Marjak, a French merchant, and moved to Paris. There, she worked for Radio Télévision Française and met writers from the nouveau roman movement and Tel Quel. She published her first fiction book, Clara (Hay que sonreír), which was named after its main character. In 1958, she gave birth to her daughter, Anna-Lisa Marjak.

In 1961, she returned to Argentina and worked as a journalist for La Nación and Crisis magazine. She divorced in 1965. Between 1967 and 1968, she traveled to Bolivia, Peru, and Brazil for La Nación.

In 1969, she received a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the University of Iowa, where she wrote The Efficient Cat (El gato eficaz). From 1972 to 1974, she lived in Mexico City, Paris, and Barcelona, with a short stay in New York. She studied American literature as part of a scholarship from Argentina’s National Fund for the Arts. Due to government censorship, she moved to the United States in 1976, where she lived for ten years. In 1982, she published a short story collection titled Change of Guard (Cambio de armas). In 1983, she released a novel, The Lizard’s Tail (Cola de lagartija), about José López Rega, a government official during Isabel Perón’s presidency.

Luisa worked as a Resident Writer at the Center for Interamerican Relations in New York and at Columbia University, where she taught writing for ten years. She was a member of the New York Institute for the Humanities, the Fund for Free Expression, and the Freedom to Write Committee of the PEN American Center. In 1983, she received a Guggenheim Scholarship. In 1989, she returned to Buenos Aires, where she completed two books: National Reality from Bed (Realidad nacional desde la cama), originally planned as a play, and Black Novel with Argentines (Novela negra con argentinos), which was initially meant to be called The Motive (El motivo).