Juan Radrigán

Juan Rojas Radrigán (January 23, 1937 – October 16, 2016) was a Chilean playwright, novelist and poet. He was awarded Chile's National Prize for Performing and Audiovisual Arts in 2011. Radrigán was born in 1937 in Antofagasta, one of three brothers born to working-class parents. As a child, Radrigán worked to support the family's scant income, never receiving a formal education. Entirely self-taught, he became an avid reader and began writing poetry and stories from the age of twelve.

Radrigán was appointed editor of Unpublished Notebooks, an official publication of the Unpublished Writers Center, from November 1961 to July 1962. At the age of 25 he published his first volume of short stories Los Vencidos no Creen en Dios, followed six years later by his second novel El Vino de la Cobardía. He died on October 16, 2016, at the age of 79.