María Elena Walsh

María Elena Walsh
María Elena Walsh in the 1980s.
Born	(1930-02-01)1 February 1930 Ramos Mejía, Argentina
Died	10 January 2011(2011-01-10) (aged 80) Buenos Aires, Argentina
Occupation	Poet, author, musician, writer
Genre	Children's literature, Autobiographical novel, poetry
Partner	Sara Facio (1978–2011)
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María Elena Walsh (1 February 1930 – 10 January 2011) was an Argentine poet, novelist, musician, playwright, writer and composer, mainly known for her songs and books for children, who has been considered a "living legend, cultural hero (and) crest of nearly every childhood".

What was written by María Elena configures the most important work of all time in its genre, comparable to Lewis Carroll's Alice or Pinocchio, a work that revolutionized the way to understand the relationship between poetry and childhood.

María Elena Walsh was born in Villa Sarmiento, Ramos Mejía, Greater Buenos Aires, to an English railway worker, of Irish descent, who played the piano and an Argentine woman of Andalusian descent. As a child, she lived in a big house, where she greatly enjoyed reading and listening to music in a cultural environment.

When she was 15, Walsh had some of her poems published in El Hogar magazine and La Nación newspaper. In 1947, before graduating from art school, she published her first book, Otoño Imperdonable, a collection of poems which was critically acclaimed and received recognition from important Latin American writers.

After graduation in 1948, she traveled to North America invited by poet Juan Ramon Jiménez and Europe during the era of Peronism and then moved to Paris where she spent four years in the early 1950s. While there, Walsh performed in concerts featuring Argentine folklore with fellow Argentinean singer Leda Valladares (born 1919), forming the duo Leda & Maria and recording for Le chant du monde.

She returned to Argentina in 1956 after the Revolución Libertadora. From 1958 onwards, Walsh wrote numerous TV scripts, plays, poems, books and songs, specially dedicated to young children. She was also a successful performer, singing her own songs onstage and recording them later in albums, like Canciones para mirar, Canciones para mí and El País de Nomeacuerdo. Juguemos en el mundo, also an album, was a satirical show for adults, which also became a film of the same title with a story unrelated to the original stage show and songs recording. The film was based on her characters Doña Disparate y Bambuco and was directed by her partner at that time, Maria Herminia Avellaneda (1933–1997).