Daniela Catrileo, born in 1987 in Santiago de Chile, is a writer, artist, activist, and philosophy lecturer. She studied pedagogy and philosophy at the Universidad Metropolitana de las Ciencias de la Educación. She organizes literary workshops, is an active member of the Mapuche collective »Rangiñtulewfü«, and received grants from the Chilean Ministry of Culture, Arts, and Heritage in 2012, 2016, and 2020. Catrileo is committed to the rights of Chile’s indigenous population: in 2018, together with filmmaker Rocío Chávez García and professor Carolina Herrera Águila, she realized the multi-part intervention »Mari pura warangka küla patakamari meli: 18.314« in Santiago de Chile, which addresses Anti-Terrorism Law 18.314, enacted in 1984 under the Pinochet dictatorship, and the injustice it inflicted on the Mapuche.
As a writer, Catrileo first became known primarily for her poetry. The title of her first poetry collection, »Río Herido« (2016), derives from her own surname: »Catrileo« is a hispanicized form of the Mapuche word »katrü lewfü«, meaning “wounded river,” or “río herido.” The river becomes a metaphor for the loss of identity and the Mapuche’s ongoing resistance against erasure and assimilation. These were followed by »El territorio del viaje« (transl.: Territory of Travel), the digital publication »Intervertebrada«, and the volume »Guerra Florida / Rayülechi Malon« (2018; transl.: Flowering War). With »Piñen« (2020; tr. Grime Clinging to the Body), she presented her first prose volume: three stories set in post-dictatorship Santiago of the 1990s dealing with death, violence, racism, and female Mapuche identity, which historian Claudia Zapata Silva described as “a literary work from the trenches of counterculture.” In 2023, Catrileo’s debut novel »Chilco« was published. The English edition (tr. Jacob Edelstein) is regarded as the first novel by a Mapuche woman published in English.
In 2019 and 2024, she received the Premio Municipal de Literatura de Santiago. In 2026, Daniela Catrileo received the Anna Seghers Prize. Daniela Catrileo has also published numerous articles and essays in Chilean and Argentine newspapers and magazines. She lives in Valparaíso.
Last Update: 2026