About – Raul Galvez

IN HIS OWN WORDS (as of 2007)

Raúl Galvez was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he read law for three years at the University of Social Sciences, followed by a disappointing one year stay at the University of Philosophy & Literature, and three years at the National Film Institute, where he graduated as a filmmaker. He comes from an old Argentinean family of writers and statesmen. Son of Jaime Gálvez, a doctor in law, writer, university professor and historian, brother of Lía Rosa Gálvez, also a poet, and great nephew of the late Manuel Gálvez, novelist, founder and president of the P.E.N. Club in Buenos Aires, twice proposed for the Nobel Prize and one of the most prolific Argentinean writers.

Raúl Gálvez has written for newspapers La Prensa, La Nueva Provincia and Papiro Magazine, in Buenos Aires. In 1980 he settled in Toronto, from where he has collaborated with literary magazines in Canada, the US and Mexico, publishing poems, magazine articles and short stories. For two years covered Latin America for CBC Radio Canada International.

View From A Portrait, one of his earlier stories was published in the first Latin American Writers in Canada Anthology (Canadian Fiction Magazine) made into a film and acquired by First Choice, SuperChannel (Canada,) A&E (USA) among other broadcasters. From The Ashen Land Of The Virgin (Mosaic Press – Conversations with Borges, Bioy Casares, Silvina Ocampo, Sabato, Denevi, etc), The Hades’ Seduction/La Seducción De Los Hados (Artifact Publishers – Poems,) for which he was awarded a Canada Council grant in 1997, The Bleeding Garden/El Sangrante Jardín (Mosaic Press – Bilingual Edition – Poems – ) and Esteban’s Diary, Buenos Aires, 1969 (novel in progress), are his latest books.

He has written several screenplays, among the most recent ones: The Lesson Of The Master, a feature film based on the Henry James story; Just For A Year, an original feature film set in Toronto, and four docu-dramas part of A Life In The Day Of…, a 13 One Hour Series for television currently in production.

Raul Galvez Hispanos Autoretrato

IN HIS WIFE KIM’S WORDS

The list and span is extensive.

The energy and imagination impressive (He is a Leo)
He was bold and original.
He followed no one.

Bernardo de Galvez, an ancestor of his entitled his autobiography “Yo Solo” “I Alone”, and so it was for Raul.

Perhaps to his own detriment.

For now as he sinks into dementia, his works are not known. Not recorded, not published, not performed, not filmed.

Was that his intransigence?

An incisive journalist and CBC Broadcaster
A lightning simultaneous interpreter
A surreal short story and long-form writer
A passionate player/composer for guitar and piano
A seductive voice both spoken and sung
A driven filmmaker – against all odds
A published interviewer of international film directors and Argentine writers
An artist of precise pen and inks, and lover of a languorous line
A Latin Film Festival curator/director
An aficionado of dogs and horses and La Pampa
A Lover and bon vivant
a marchand of hand-made guitars, and Argentine antiques
And a twirling reinventor/survivor imagining strawberry fields on the banks of the river Paraná; incredible villas complete (of course) with pool, tennis court, and ‘a couple’ to take care of it;
A proud descendant of writers, historians, philanthropists that came from great fortunes, which then were no more.

Raul Galvez Toronto Life by Alberto Manguel

Here is Raul revealed at last.

Enter!