The Argentine writer Tamara Tenenbaum was the winner of the first edition of the Paidós Essay Prize, which is endowed with 35,000 euros, thanks to her work "A Million Private Rooms". The book arises from the translation of "A Room of One's Own" by Virginia Woolf, a commission that the author received in mid-2022. Tenenbaum, who read the work in her adolescence and noted the remoteness of the references to the Río de la Plata tradition, proposes a reinterpretation of the Woolfian text to reflect on current issues affecting women and society in general.
The jury of the prize, established to celebrate the 80th anniversary of Editorial Paidós, belonging to the Planeta Group, selected Tenenbaum's work from 207 submitted manuscripts. They highlighted her essay for its smooth and fluent prose in a text rich in contemporary literary, philosophical, and cultural references. For Tenenbaum, "A Room of One's Own" acts as a guide that inspires her to think of new ways of living in the 21st century, challenging conservative discourses and proposing modern and postmodern approaches that address uncertainty without falling into extremes.
The Argentine author aims in "A Million Private Rooms" to seek not only what Virginia Woolf had but what is lacking in today's society. The work, which will be published on February 26 by Paidós, develops a central thesis around the idea that for women to write, they need more than just a room of their own and a sufficient income. Tenenbaum emphasizes the relevance of the issues and questions raised in the essay, revealing that many feminist debates address matters that have already been surpassed due to the rights gained, which she considers a natural obsolescence of the discourse.
Tamara Tenenbaum, born in Buenos Aires in 1989, holds a degree in Philosophy and is a professor at the University of Buenos Aires, as well as a Writing teacher at the National University of the Arts. With a diverse literary career, the author has ventured into poetry with "Territorial Acknowledgment", short stories with "No One Lives So Close to Anyone", essays with "The End of Love. Loving and F***ing in the 21st Century", and novels with "All Our Curses Were Fulfilled" and "The Last Actress". She has also explored theater and screenwriting for series like "The End of Love", based on her eponymous book.
