Isabel Allende

Chilean-American novelist, one of the most widely read writers in the Spanish-speaking world and beyond. Author of The House of the Spirits (1982), Eva Luna, Paula, A Long Petal of the Sea, and many others. Winner of the Premio Nacional de Literatura (Chile, 2010), the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom (2014), and the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award (2016). Based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Connection

David Vasquez-Levy has met Allende at events and mutual friend gatherings in the Bay Area.

Why Herbert Would Be Delighted

Allende's writing has always engaged questions of memory, justice, loss, and the moral life — in a Latin American register that speaks directly to the progressive, cross-cultural theology Herbert has spent his career practicing. A Bay Area author known globally; a connection through faith and politics.