Hilda Hilst

Hilda de Almeida Prado Hilst (April 21, 1930 – February 4, 2004), more widely known as Hilda Hilst, was a Brazilian poet, playwright, and novelist, whose fiction and poetry often drew upon themes of delicate intimacy, whilst also addressing the topic of insanity and incorporating supernatural events. Several of her late works include elements of magic realism.

Hilst was born in Jaú, São Paulo State, Brazil. After attending the Colégia Santa Marcelina in São Paulo, she studied at Mackenzie Presbyterian Institute in the same city from 1945 to 1947. In 1948 she enrolled in the Law School at Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de São Paulo (Largo São Francisco), finishing it in 1952. There she met her best friend, the writer Lygia Fagundes Telles. In 1966, Hilda moved to Casa do Sol (Sunhouse), a country seat next to Campinas, where she hosted an array of writers and artists for several years.

She died in Campinas.

Hilda Hilst wrote for almost 50 years, and collected the most important Brazilian literary prizes. Her work proceeded in several stages: she began as a poet, publishing Presságio in 1950; started publishing and staging plays in 1967; and shifted into prose in 1970, with her experimental text Fluxo-Floema. Throughout her career, beginning in 1958, with Adoniron Barbosa, musicians selected poems of hers to be set to music.

In 1962 she won the Prêmio PEN Clube of São Paulo, for Sete Cantos do Poeta para o Anjo (Massao Ohno Editor, 1962). In 1969, the play O Verdugo took the Prêmio Anchieta, one of the most important in the country at the time. The Associação Brasileira de Críticos de Arte (APCA Prize) deemed Ficções (Edições Quíron, 1977) the best book of the year. In 1981, Hilda Hilst won the Grande Prêmio da Crítica para o Conjunto da Obra, by the same Associação Brasileira de Críticos de Arte. In 1984, the Câmara Brasileira do Livro awarded her the Jabuti Prize for Cantares de Perda e Predileção, and the following year the same book claimed the Prêmio Cassiano Ricardo (Clube de Poesia de São Paulo). Rútilo Nada, published in 1993, took the Jabuti Prize for best short story, and finally, on August 9, 2002, she was awarded at the 47th edition of Prêmio Moinho Santista in the poetry category.

...
Wikipedia