Interviews

Viviana Marcela Iriart (1958) is an Argentine-Venezuelan writer and interviewer. She studied journalism in La Plata, Argentina, but for being a pacifist, she was exiled by the Argentine dictatorship in 1979. Venezuela granted her asylum, and four months later, at the age of 21, she wrote her first professional report... on Julio Cortázar, an interview included in this book.

She has published novels, plays, and three books on Carlos Giménez: ¡Bravo Carlos Giménez!, Carlos Giménez the Irreverent Genius, and María Teresa Castillo-Carlos Giménez-Caracas International Theater Festival 1973-1992 (with José Pulido, Rolando Peña, Roland Streuli, Karla Gómez and Carmen Carmona). Founder of the publishing house Escritoras Unidas & Cía. Editoras and the cultural blog of the same name.

JULIO CORTÁZAR, Argentine writer: "A day in my life is always a very beautiful thing, because I feel very happy to be alive"

ESTHER DITA KOHN DE COHÉN, founder of the Anne Frank Space, patron of Venezuelan culture, creator of the book Exile to Life, Jewish survivors of the Shoah: (in the Holocaust, the family) "there were approximately 500 people; we don't know exactly how many were murdered, that was terrible."

JULIO EMILIO MOLINÉ, American filmmaker, co-director of "JOAN BAEZ IN LATIN AMERICA: THERE BUT FOR FORTUNE" (1981), a documentary filmed clandestinely during Joan Baez's tour to support victims of the dictatorships in Argentina, Chile, and Brazil: "Joan received death threats, was banned, and persecuted..."

NAVA SEMEL, Israeli writer: And the Rat Laughed with Jane Fonda (interview) and one text: "A Walk with Jane Fonda".

ROLANDO PEÑA, Venezuelan multimedia artist: "We baptized the group in a bathtub, and the godfather was Andy Warhol".

ELISA LERNER, Venezuelan writer and playwright: "Solitude is the writer's homeland"

SUSY DEMBO, Austrian-Venezuelan visual artist: "Engraving is alchemical, it is magical"

JOSÉ PULIDO, Venezuelan poet, writer, and journalist: "I'm like a castaway clinging to his tongue"

CARLOS GIMÉNEZ, Argentine-Venezuelan theater director, cultural manager, founder of the Caracas International Theater Festival and the Rajatabla group: "Our country is the empire of faits accomplis, of de facto culture"

BEATRIZ IRIART, Argentine poet: "At 10 years old, I was already an old woman. Writing poetry was a way to transmute that pain."

DINAPIERA DI DONATO, Venezuelan poet: "The imagination creates versions of life, but I cannot understand life without a version"

MARÍA LAMADRID, Argentine activist, founder of "África Vive" "We are the first disappeared people in Argentina"

MARIANA RONDÓN, Venezuelan filmmaker, director of the film "Pelo Malo" "In my childhood, I believed that cinema was just one film, The Yellow Submarine."

ROLAND STREULI, Swiss-Venezuelan photographer: "My life is color; I am not an opaque or black and white person"

INTERVIEWS by Viviana Marcela Iriart, graphic design by Jairo Carthy, Escritoras Unidas & Cía. Editoras