Project Description
The Woman in the RiverPaula Ilabaca
Chile
Paula Ilabaca, born in 1979 in Santiago, is a Chilean writer, teacher and editor. She holds a Master in Higher Education, Bachelor in Hispanic American Language and Literature, Bachelor in Education. Between 2004 and 2014 she worked in a teaching and media liaison role with Chilean Investigative Police, enabling her to learn in depth the culture of the police. She has twice received the Literary Creation Scholarship awarded by the National Book and Reading Council in Chile. In 2010 she won the Chilean Literary Critics’ Prize for her poetry collection THE LOOSE PEARL. In 2015, she was awarded the Pablo Neruda Prize for her poetic works. She currently teaches at the Adolfo Ibañez University and gives literary workshops.
© Lorena Palavecino//
The Woman in the River
In the mid-1980s, a scout patrol finds a bag of rubbish on the banks of the Mapocho river. When they open it, the most terrifying horror emerges from it. Mercedes Torrealba, detective in the Investigative Police’s homicide branch, is put in charge of the case and will have to face herself and her own shadows until she discovers the truth behind the crime. The Woman in the River (“La mujer del río”), based on true events, reads like the most addictive True Crime and immerses us in the life of a policewoman trapped in a world of men, who only hinder and entangle her already complex work.
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Road Closed Ahead
Road Closed Ahead (“Camino cerrado”) is set in Santiago in late 2006, when the classification of femicide in Chile did not yet exist. At the peak of her career as a police officer, Detective Amparo Leiva of the Homicide Squad has to deal with the investigation of the murder of a woman at the hands of her lover. It is a crime scene that opens old doors into her own past and brings back an old case from her early days as a detective. Hoping an important assignment to the city of Iquique but caught up a disciplinary investigation, admired for her police work and at the same time being questioned by her peers, Leiva finds herself entangled in a menacing plot from which only her memories will save her.
RIGHTS
NOVELS
The Woman in the River (“La mujer del río”)
Santiago de Chile: Sudamericana (PRH) 2024, 184 p.
English sample translation available
Road Closed Ahead (“Camino cerrado”)
Santiago de Chile: LOM 2022, 168 p.
English sample translation available
The Rule of the Nines (“La regla de los nueve”)
Santiago de Chile: Planeta 2015, 143 p.
Juegos Florales Award 2014
English sample translation available
POETRY
Peninsulas (“Penínsulas”)
Santiago de Chile: Red Internacional del Libro 2019, 80 p.
And the Blood Circulated in Her Flesh Like a River of Milk (“Y la sangre circulaba en su carne como un río de leche”)
With Paula Andrea (Ed.)
Guanajuato/Mexico: Cinosargo Ediciones 2013, 40 p.
(in) Complete (“(in) Completa”)
Santiago de Chile: MAGO Editores 2011, 90 p.
The Loose Pearl (“La perla suelta”)
Santiago de Chile: Cuarto Propio 2009, 90 p.
Chilean Literary Critics’ Prize 2010
PEN America Award for Poetry in Translation 2023
USA: co•im•press 2023
Translated by Daniel Borzutzky
The City Shone (“La ciudad lucía”)
Santiago de Chile: 2+2=5 Editorial 2006, 70 p.
PARTICIPATION IN ANTHOLOGIES
Anthology of Prose Poems and Prose Poetry
(“Antología de poema en prosa y prosa poética”)
With Paula Andrea (Ed.)
Santiago de Chile: Cástor y Pólux SpA 2023, 127 p.
