Elvira Hernández

Elvira Hernández (b. Lebu, Chile, in 1951) is one of the most important yet low-profile voices of contemporary Chilean poetry. Her work, which includes visual poetry and essay, is often associated with the neo-avant-garde generation of Chilean writers, which emerged in the 1980s through the artistic interventions and publications of Raúl Zurita, Diamela Eltit, and Juan Luis Martínez, among others. She has published the following books of poetry: ¡Arre! Halley ¡Arre! (1986), Meditaciones físicas por un hombre que se fue (1987), Carta de viaje (1989), La bandera de Chile (1991), El orden de los días (1991), Santiago Waria (1992), Álbum de Valparaíso (2002), Cultivo de hojas (2007), Cuaderno de deportes (2010), un fantasma recorre el mundo (2012), Actas urbe (2016), Pájaros desde mi ventana (2018), and Pena corporal (2018). In 2018, she was awarded the Jorge Teillier National Poetry Prize and the Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Poetry Prize. In 2024, she was awarded the Chilean National Prize for Literature. An anthology of her selected poetry, Bodies Found in Various Places, translated by Daniel Borzutzky and Alec Schumacher, was published in August of 2025 by Cardboard House Press.