The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) announced that it has invited renowned Brazilian artist and writer Nélida Piñón to present the second lecture of the Enrique V. Iglesias Chair for Culture and Development, which was created to highlight the greatest humanists and cultural promoters in the region. The event will take place in Washington D.C. on December 5, 2013 at Bank headquarters.
The Chair Committee, composed of IDB President Luis Alberto Moreno, Ibero-American Secretary General Enrique V. Iglesias, Costa Rica's Minister of Culture Manuel Obregón and well-known curator of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts Mari Carmen Ramírez, has exalted the role of the Chair as a space for reflection on the role of culture in regional development.
Nélida Piñón is considered one of the most renowned exponents of contemporary Brazilian literature. Parallel to her career as a writer and journalist, Piñón has headed a large number of cultural institutions including the Creative Writing Laboratory of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (1970), the Cultural Division of the Department of Culture of the State of Rio de Janeiro and the Association of Friends of the Casa de la Cultura "Laura Alvim" (1987). She also served as vice president of the Writers Guild of Rio de Janeiro. Since 1989 she is member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, which she also presided from 1996 to 1997, becoming the first woman in the world presiding over a national literary academy.
Among her works are the storybooks El tiempo de las frutas (1966) and Sala de armas (1973), the novels Fundador (1969 Walmap Award), Tebas de mi corazón (1974), La fuerza del destino (1977), La dulce canción de Cayetana (José Geraldo Vieira Award for Best Novel in 1987), La república de los sueños (Alfaguara 1999), which received awards from the Association of Art Critics of São Paulo Prize and the Pen Club, and Voces del desierto (Alfaguara, 2005).
Her prolific literary production has also been reason of numerous awards and honors, including the Juan Rulfo International Prize for Latin American and Caribbean Literature, 1995, the Menéndez Pelayo International Prize 2003, and the Prince of Asturias Literature Prize 2005. Her works have been translated into several languages and her name has been mentioned among the next candidates for the Nobel Prize for Literature.
According to Iván Duque Márquez, Chief of the IDB's Cultural, Solidarity and Creativity Affairs Division at the IDB, “The presence of master Nélida Piñón in the Enrique V. Iglesias Chair for Culture and Development is a symbol of the role women artists play in regional culture, and represents the value of creativity and the Brazilian heritage on the continent.”