Jaime Collyer: Raw Footage for IWP Interview

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Jaime Collyer begins by sharing with the interviewer off-camera that he began writing at a young age, and always thought he would become a writer, however, as a student he trained to become a psychologist.  He studied on scholarship in Spain, where he wrote his first novel, El Infiltrado (The Infiltrator) and his collection of short stories Gente al acecho (People on the Prowl).  El Infiltrado is a political thriller about Chile in the early 1980s, and the stories in Gente al acecho are about, among many other topics, his experience of living in Spain as a Latin American.  He discusses the publication of his latest book, the novel Cien pajaros volando (A Hundred Birds Flying).  He says that the title comes from the Spanish proverb, “Better to have a bird in your hand than to have a hundred birds flying.” He describes how the practice of psychology relates to his work as a writer. 

In: International Writing Program Archive

Authors: Jamie Collyer

Date Recorded: January 01, 1995

Program: --

Format: interview

Topics: Fiction writing; history of Chile; Spanish/Latin American relations

Note: Month and Day are unknown.

Play Audio (16 min.)