Gino Ginoris

Poet, narrator, and editor. He has resided in Santiago de Chile since 2003. He directs Editorial Verbo(des)nudo and the literary journal of the same name.

He was born and spent his childhood in Cárdenas, a city near the sea, with grandparents who were improviser poets; he was the youngest of four siblings, which made him the natural heir to everything his older brothers could no longer use because it was too big for them, the mandatory school vacation plans for children whose parents worked, which were the perfect setting for bullying and contempt toward withdrawn children without many friends like him.

His grandmother, when he was small, gave him a very old notebook where he began to write a story and then some loose phrases. By sixth grade he had written a "novel" in pencil, about 30 pages, and four or five more notebooks filled with writings. He attended literature workshops at the Casa de la Cultura a few times but found them boring and preferred to read at school; he would sneak out of class and go to the library, which had been a Catholic chapel in its time. He loved that silence, the smell of books, the knowing smile of the librarian. He would copy poems that he later tried to imitate and borrow books that he never finished reading until he discovered the Concha de Venus, the only place in town where they sold books; then he understood that the school library didn't have the books he liked to read.

But he was always shy about showing what he wrote. Later, as a young man, he began to frequent places where writers gathered and to discover more powerful readings, poets who would forever mark the path he had decided to take.

At age 19, a very strange incident with a cultural official caused him to withdraw from all of that in an almost stone-like manner, although he continued writing as a necessary exercise. He had in his hands the proofs of a poetry collection that was swallowed by time, intrigues, and the "political" analyses of someone who decided the fate of that book with an opinion, and which turned his possible entry into the literary world into a nightmare.

He arrived in Chile in March 2003, to start over even if it was at the North Pole, and life is a hard hitter when you make those decisions. For the first time he found himself alone in a place he didn't know and had to learn through painful experience what exile was about. He cleaned carpets, was a building guard, worked as a restaurant waiter, had his own businesses, but he never stopped writing. He remembers dying of exhaustion and yet sitting down to write almost every night. He found a fairly active literary movement in Santiago and through the web began to meet people with the same interests.

It was the time when blogs were at their peak and a group of bloggers decided to come together one night and break the "virtuality," first creating a literary group and then a journal. That's where Verbo(des)nudo was born, as the spearhead to break barriers, the idea of untying the knots imposed by the publishing industry and putting on paper those texts they shared on the web gradually took shape until in 2011 the journal was truly founded, physical, printed, independent.

It was a good collective but people lose their primal instincts and drift apart; of the founders only Mafalda Migliaro and Gino remain. Then came the Editorial with the same name, materializing little by little, and today it already has more than 25 titles in its catalog, almost all of them debut works.

He has published five books and Yale is the most recent; there are many unpublished texts, many, some grouped in small poetry collections but most are waiting, waiting for him to dedicate a look, a "turn of the screw" that makes them breathe again.

There are also short stories and a novel he finished recently called Blanco, which he hasn't returned to due to lack of time and desire, and which frightens him greatly. He loves editorial work, that process that begins with the first conversation with the author and becomes the most important thing while it lasts, getting into the skin of each text, discovering its hidden meanings, calling the author at 11 at night to propose a change, an omission, or to have him explain an idea.

It's fascinating and something I've been doing for a long time with much responsibility and dedication, and yes, it's part of those traps I set for myself to avoid approaching my own texts. But it's not just editing; I invent readings even if it's a book I've already read, I look for excuses not to sit down and write, but in the end the ideas overcome me and reluctantly I sit down and let them come out and settle wherever they please.

He has served as a judge in different literary competitions, among which the following stands out: Gonzalo Rojas Pizarro 2014. His work has been included in different journals and anthologies in Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Canada, and the USA, having been translated into French and Portuguese. He has published, in poetry: A la espera del próximo vuelo (2011), Para dejar grabados mis instintos, and El otro lado de la bestia (2014).