She was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on the 31st of January 1944. The granddaughter of Italian and Spanish immigrants, and daughter of a businessman and a housewife and amateur painter, Diana went to elementary and high school at the French School of Buenos Aires. In 1961 she received her Baccalauréat in Philosophy (from the University of Paris ), and went on to work as a French instructor in the Villa Devoto School.
Later she entered the degree program in cinematography at the University of La Plata (Argentina), but interrupted her studies to start working, in 1965, producing and directing commercials and documentaries. In 1966, she was awarded the National Fund for the Arts “Prize for Best Photography” as director of photography for documentaries in schools. From 1965 on and along all her life, she was trained in numerous seminars as a theater director and playwright by the most outstanding Argentine professors, such as Carlos Gandolfo, Augusto Fernandes, Laura Yusem and Roberto Cossa.
Her political calling was manifest in activism while at university. She interacted with the leftist groups that gradually came to coalesce in the Peronist movement. With General Perón's 1972 return to Argentina, her own political vocation found the opportunity to express itself in full. After an initial period contributing to the news venue of the Juventud Peronista (the Peronist Youth) and a stint as Assistant Director of production for the Telam Advertising Agency (part of the press team working directly with President Perón during the months of his third presidency), she began to write articles on politics in unionist journals.
In 1974, she left her activities in advertising and cinema definitively behind her, and dedicated her time entirely to writing, developing her political thought, and raising her three children.
In 1975 she won an Honorable Mention in the “Love Stories” contest conducted by the magazine Claudia .
She wrote for political publications such as Línea (Line), Columna Azul y Blanca (The Blue and White Column), Protagonismo (Protagonism), Planteo (Statement), and Tribuna de la República (Tribune of the Republic), and later also contributed to women's magazines such as Claudia and Vogue. She carried out other journalistic activities as well, organizing two conferences in 1983 and 1984 on political, psychological, and sociological issues in the “Salón de la Mujer” (the Women's Hall), and the launch of the young people's magazine Quark, for which she was Coordinating Editor.
Her first three books of fiction came out almost simultaneously in 1983. Their titles are Laura sin lauro (Laura without Laurels), a novella; El hombre que no está (The Man Who Isn't There) which in 1984 received the Arturo Mejía Nieto Prize for best book of short stories awarded by the Argentine Writers' Association; and Cartas rosas de una indiscreta enamorada (Romantic Letters from an Indiscreet Woman in Love), an epistolary novel.
In 1985 she published her first book of non-fiction on politics, The Argentine Cultural Personality, which ushered in an effort to revise Peronism and which is considered, along with the books that followed it, the theoretical framework for what later would be called Liberal Peronism.
Between 1989 and 2001, she wrote works of fiction as well as political essays that treat the turn-around in Peronism and Argentina 's new profile on the American continent and in the world at large. The Barbecue and The Very Private Letters of the Landowner María López (both out in 1989) were followed by other books published in Buenos Aires by Catálogos: two collections of short stories –Argentina hora final (Argentina The Final Hour), 1991, and Escenas de una película argentina (Scenes from an Argentine Movie ), 1993– and several non-fiction works –Retrato del argentino americano y la nueva utopía continental (Portrait of the Argentine American and the New Continental Utopia ), 1996; La generación peronista del ‘73 y el proyecto de la gran Argentina (The Peronist Generation of '73 and the Project of the Great Argentina), 1996; La Argentina como marca (Argentina as a Brand name ), 1997; Continuidad y conclusión del peronismo (Peronism's Continuance and Peronism's Conclusion), 1998; La patria del destino (The Homeland of Destiny), 1999; and La conspiración de los artistas (The Conspiracy of the Artists), 2001. In 1998 she also brought out a novel, La muchacha del puerto (The Girl from the Port).
As part of the Peronist wing of the newly formed party “Acción por la República” (“Action for the Republic”) under Domingo Cavallo's leadership, Diana Ferraro held diverse positions between 1997 and 2001 and was chosen as a candidate to run for a seat as a Congressional Representative for Buenos Aires. She also worked as Director of the Cultural Institute at the Novum Millenium Foundation.
In the year 2000 she presented her book of essays, La patria del destino (The Homeland of Destiny) at the Virginia Festival of the Book, in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, with a talk titled “Cultural and Political Continentalism.”
From 1999 till 2006, she shuttled between homes in Buenos Aires and Richmond, Virginia. From January 2006 till February 2008 she went back to college and graduated summa cum laude in March 2008 from Ellis College of the New York Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Arts' degree in English, specialization in Literature and Culture.
Her most recent works are La vida americana (American Life, short stories, 2003); La vida de Mercedes (The Life of Mercedes, a novel, 2004); and El Tiempo (The Time, a play, 2008). As a member of the Zoetrope Virtual Studio, she has also worked in a collection of short stories and flash fiction in English (2007-2008).
Her blog of political articles about Argentina can be found at: http://dianaferraro.blogspot.com
Articles and essays in English about continental issues in The Continental Blog at: http://dianaferraroenglish.blogspot.com
