Lucía Etxebarría
Encyclopedia
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
writer. She was born in Valencia
Valencia (city in Spain)
Valencia or València is the capital and most populous city of the autonomous community of Valencia and the third largest city in Spain, with a population of 809,267 in 2010. It is the 15th-most populous municipality in the European Union...
in 1966, of Basque
Basque people
The Basques as an ethnic group, primarily inhabit an area traditionally known as the Basque Country , a region that is located around the western end of the Pyrenees on the coast of the Bay of Biscay and straddles parts of north-central Spain and south-western France.The Basques are known in the...
parents as her name suggests, the youngest of seven children. The Basque surname Etxebarria
Etxebarria
Etxebarria is a town and municipality located in the province of Biscay, in the autonomous community of Basque Country, northern Spain.-See also:Javier, Etxebarri, Etxeberria, Chávarri are names with the same Basque etymons.-External links:*...
has no diacritics, although its Spanish version Echevarría has. Etxebarría was a typo that she liked and adopted as a nom de plume, though it is not used in all her books.
Career
Her first book was Kurt CobainKurt Cobain
Kurt Donald Cobain was an American singer-songwriter, musician and artist, best known as the lead singer and guitarist of the grunge band Nirvana...
and Courtney Love
Courtney Love
Courtney Michelle Love is an American rock musician. Love is the lead vocalist, lyricist, and rhythm guitarist for alternative rock band Hole, which she formed in 1989, and is an actress who has moved from bit parts in Alex Cox films to significant and acclaimed roles in The People vs...
’s biography
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
: La historia de Kurt y Courtney: aguanta esto (1996). Her first novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
, Amor, curiosidad, prozac y dudas (1997) received Ana María Matute
Ana María Matute
Ana María Matute is an internationally acclaimed Spanish author. She is one of the strongest voices from the posguerra, or period immediately following the Spanish Civil War...
's support, and situated her in the Generacion Kronen scope. The following year her second novel, Beatriz y los cuerpos celestes, won the Nadal prize.
With De todo lo visible y lo invisible (2001) she won the Primavera Prize. With Un milagro en equilibrio, she obtained the 53rd Planeta Prize in 2004. In addition to these books and many other titles she has published poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
; her collection Actos de placer y amor won the Barcarola Poetry Prize in 2004. She has published two collections of feminist
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
essay
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
s, and has also worked as a scriptwriter.
Plagiarism accusations
Lucía Etxebarria has been accused of plagiarismPlagiarism
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...
twice. In 2001, the Spanish magazine Interviú
Interviu
Interviú is a Spanish magazine published by Grupo Zeta that is famous for publishing semi-nude and nude photographs of the rich and famous, sometimes using paparazzi photoshoots or posed pictorials .It also publishes articles on political and economic scandals, and features opinion pieces by...
published an article stating Etxebarria had copied literal verses from Antonio Colina for her book Estación de infierno, and that her first novel, Amor, curiosidad, Prozac y dudas, included literal sentences copied from the book Prozac Nation, by the American writer Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Lee Wurtzel is an American corporate attorney, writer and journalist, known for her work in the confessional memoir genre. She is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School.-Early life:...
. Etxebarria sued the magazine, which was acquitted in tribunal court. The judge's sentence explicitly mentioned that the information published by Interviú was true, and that Extebarria had indeed copied works by Antonio Colina. The judgement was not later challenged in an appeal court.
In 2006, Spanish psychologist Jorge Castelló sued her for plagiarism. He states that Etxebarria used one of his articles in the first chapter of her book Ya no sufro por amor, mixing sentences from his article with sentences by herself, without proper quotation marks and in a way that it is impossible to know who wrote them. Etxebarria lists Castelló's article in the book bibliography and a warning text was included in the 6th edition. Castelló considers this is not enough, and requests that Etxebarria uses proper quotation marks surrounding his sentences.