Hernán Neira is both a writer and a University Professor. Chilean, born in Lima (1960), he received his undergraduate degree in Philosophy from the Catholic University in Santiago where he also directed Perspectivas, a student magazine opposed to the dictatorship. From 1985 to 1992 he lived in Paris where he received his Doctorate in Philosophy at the Paris VIII University. He also studied sociology and linguistics at the l’École de hautes etudes in social sciences. He taught in France at the Institut d’études politiques (1991-1992), and in Chile in Universidad de La Serena (1984-1985) and in Universidad Austral (1993-2007), and has been invited to teach at the University of Chile, Diego Portales, Los Lagos, La Frontera and Universidad Nacional Andrés Bello. Hernán Neira has algo given several conferences in Europe. Since 2008 he is professor at Universidad de Santiago de Chile.
Since 2008 he teaches philosophy in University of Santiago de Chile. In 2011 he was elected to the Academic Counsel of this university. His academic work is focused on political theory, literary theory and Latin-American culture. He has published scientific articles in Chile, the United States, Spain, the Netherlands and Cuba, and has received five times the support of the National Found for Science and Technology (Fondecyt).
Author of numerous books, he continues to be one of the most notable authors of the new generations. He has a distinguished voice that allows him to take on the genres of fiction as well as theory.
He has published one book of short-stories A golpes de hacha y fuego (By blows of axe and fire) (Editorial Planeta, Santiago, 1999) and two novels, El sueño inconcluso (The unconcluded dream) (Editorial Planeta, Santiago, 1999) and El naufragio de la luz (The shipwreck of the light) (Ediciones B, Barcelona, 2004). He has also published compilations of essays in El espejo del olvido (The mirror of forgetfulness) (Dolmen Ediciones, Santiago, 1997), La ciudad y las palabras (The city and words) (Editorial Universitaria, Santiago, 2004) and Visión de los vencidos. Estudio y transcripción de las Memorias de Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru. In addition, he has collaborated with the newspapers El Mercurio (Chile) and El País (Spain), and with the magazines Ecos de España y Latinoamérica (Germany), Revista Atlántica (Portugal) and The International Literary Quarterly, New York.
In 2003, with the novel El naufragio de la luz (The shipwreck of the light) he unanimously won the Dos Orillas award, given by five European publishing houses , that have translated his novel into French, Portuguese and Greek. All of which began circulation in 2005.
His recent philophical work has been translated into brazilian Portuguese and published in three books: Leituras contemporâneas da modernidade, O indivíduo inquietante e Olhares sobre a América (Editora da Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba 2004).