Elvira Orphée

Elvira Amanda Orphée (22 May 1922 in San Miguel de Tucumán – 26 April 2018) was an Argentine writer.

Biography

Elvira Orphée was born in San Miguel de Tucumán. Her father was a chemist of Greek origin, and her mother was a teacher. Often ill as a child, she learned to write early. After attending a convent school, she left aged sixteen for Buenos Aires after her mother died. She studied literature at the University of Buenos Aires and at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Over the course of her life, Orphée lived in France, Italy, Spain and Venezuela. She married artist Miguel Ocampo, the nephew of Victoria Ocampo, in Paris but divorced him after she returned to Argentina. She published her first novel Dos veranos (Two summers) in 1956.

Orphée has published short stories and articles in various publications such as El Tiempo, Revista de Occidente, Asomante, Cuadernos, Razon and Zona Franca e Imagen.

She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Creative Arts in 1988.