Hebe Uhart, one of Argentina’s most remarkable fiction writers, dies at 81

October 12, 2018

We are profoundly sad to report that Hebe Uhart, Buenos Aires-born writer and journalist, winner of the Ibero-American Manuel Rojas Narrative Prize and the Argentina’s National Endowment of the Arts’ lifetime achievement award, has died at the age of 81.

Hebe Uhart was a remarkable writer and is remembered by Latin American writers with deep affection and admiration, as a teacher and a friend. They lovingly recall anecdotes of Uhart taking notes on the behavior of a red-backed hawk, of her special connection with plants and trees, but also of her championing of new writers, students, and small publishing houses with whom she consistently worked with.

Regarding her literary career and her place in Argentine Letters, Inés Acevedo pointed out “she is at the podium, but also among the strange ones. Hebe is the best and the strangest. After decades of writing and publishing narrations, Hebe became an author that dominated a central genre for the Argentine tradition: the short story. However, this has the geographic particularity of being transnational: when we think about stories in Argentina we think about literature created in the Río de la Plata, between Argentina and Uruguay. And that was one of the strongest nuclei in Hebe’s literary identity, by which it was not a national but an inherently rioplatense literature.”

We invite you to read Mariana Enríquez and Eduardo Carrera’s loving profile on Hebe Uhart, her youth, her profession as a teacher, and the weekly Sunday asados she hosted for her neighbors, students, and friends.

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