Manuel Puig - Nominee

“Whenever I write, I'm always thinking of the reader.”

– Manuel Puig

As a youth growing up in an isolated, provincial town in Argentina, Puig sought to escape the dreariness of his surroundings with the Hollywood fantasies he enjoyed almost daily at his local movie theater. Educated in Buenos Aires, he won a scholarship to study film in Rome. He later settled in New York City in 1963 to work as a writer. His first novel La Traicion de Rita Hayworth (Betrayed by Rita Hayworth, 1971) won acclaim in French translation and helped establish Puig as one of the most influential writers in Latin America. His most successful novel — El Beso de la Mujer Araöa (Kiss of the Spider Woman, 1976) — was the story of an imprisoned hairdresser who recounts elaborate fantasies to entertain — and eventually seduce — his cellmate, a macho revolutionary. One of the best known gay creative works of all time, Kiss of the Spider Woman was successfully dramatized, first as an Oscar-winning film (1985) and then as a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical (1993).