The Last Interview and Other Conversations

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ROBERTO BOLAÑO (1950–2003) was a Chilean poet, novelist, and essayist. His translated work includes Amulet, By Night in Chile, Distant Star, Nazi Literature in the Americas, The Savage Detectives, 2666, Last Evenings on Earth, The Romantic Dogs, and The Skating Rink. His last years were spent in Blanes, on Spain’s Mediterranean coast.

Interviewers HÉCTOR SOTO and MATÍAS BRAVO interviewed Bolaño for the Chilean magazine Capital. Both were writers for the magazine; Soto was also a co-owner.

Interviewer CARMEN BOULLOSA’s 2002 interview with Bolaño appeared in Bomb, a Brooklyn-based arts and culture magazine. Boullosa is a highly regarded Mexican novelist, poet, essayist, and television personality. She is the co-host of the respected Spanish-language television program Nueva York. An essay Bolaño wrote about Boullosa, entitled “Biena y la sombra de una mujer,” appears in Entre parentesis, forthcoming in English from New Directions.

ELISEO ÁLVAREZ interviewed Bolaño shortly before his death. The interview was published posthumously in 2005 by the Barcelona literary journal Turia.

The final interview given by Bolaño appeared in the Mexican edition of Playboy magazine in July 2003. It was conducted via e-mail by MÓNICA MARISTAIN who, at the time, was the magazine’s editor-in-chief. Maristain is an Argentine editor, journalist, and writer. In 1992 she was named journalist of the year in Argentina for her coverage of the Barcelona Olympics. She has written for various national and international media outlets and published two books of poetry, Transfusiones al óleo and Drinking Thelonious. She lives in Mexico.

MARCELA VALDES is a contributing editor at Publishers Weekly and the books editor for The Washington Examiner. In 2000, she co-founded Críticas, a U.S. magazine devoted to the coverage of Spanish-language books, and in 2009 she was awarded a Nieman Fellowship in Arts & Culture Journalism at Harvard University. Her writing appears regularly in The Washington Post and The Nation, among other publications.

Translator SYBIL PEREZ, a native of Chicago, is an editor at Stop Smiling magazine, a post she has held for over ten years.