A novelist and the child of writers, Chilean writer Marcela Serrano (born 1951) originally dedicated herself to the plastic arts, and it was not until 1991 that she published her first novel, We Loved So Much, which proved a sensation that year and won Chile's major literary prize. Her subsequent novels, among which The Hotel of the Sad Women and Our Lady of Loneliness, met with the same success. Marcela Serrano is one of the most outstanding Latin American writers working today and one of the most read in Spain and Italy.