In early November 2025, the Arts Research Center celebrated its 25th anniversary by welcoming the renowned Chilean author Isabel Allende to the Morrison Library for a conversation with UC Berkeley’s Dean of Arts and Humanities, Sara Guyer.  

Recognizing ARC’s mission and introducing the night’s speakers, UC Berkeley professor and director of the Arts Research Center Beth Piatote was the first to address the audience. “The mission of the Arts Research Center is to think through the arts,” Piatote explained, “and to support arts research and artistic experimentation, uplift the role of arts practice in critical thought, and serve as a hub for artists and scholars to generate new works and analyses, both on campus and beyond.” The Arts Research Center was founded in 2000 as part of the Consortium of the Arts, an association organized by then-provost Carol Christ and co-founders Charles Altieri, Anthony Cascardi, TJ Clark, Whitney Davis, Harrison Fraker, Shannon Jackson, and David Wexel, which aimed to “advance all of the arts” at Berkeley. Piatote reflected on the thought process behind planning a commemoration and celebration on the occasion of its 25th anniversary: “As we considered how best to mark the crucial role that arts play in our lives as a form of critique, a source of spiritual sustenance, a portal of transformative beauty and possibility, and as witness to truth, we could think of no one whose life and work has more profoundly demonstrated these qualities than our guest tonight.”

Isabel Allende is one of the most widely read Spanish-language writers, with works translated into 40 languages and over 8 million copies sold worldwide. Her first novel, The House of the Spirits, became an international bestseller. Since then, she has published nearly thirty books, including novels like Eva Luna, Of Love and Shadows, Daughter of Fortune, and The Japanese Lover, as well as nonfiction works such as Paula, The Sum of Our Days, and The Soul of a Woman. Allende has received numerous honorary doctorates and awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, awarded by President Barack Obama in 2014.  

Upon entering the room, Allende displayed genuine concern for her audience’s experience, offering to stand for the duration of the conversation if it would improve their view. Sitting beside Allende in an adjacent armchair, Guyer opened the conversation by inquiring about Allende’s illustrious career and how she manages to write so prolifically. “Well, first I have to say that I have written so many books because I don't have a life,” said Allende, in good humor, met — not for the last time — with laughter from the audience. I suspect that, like me, others were charmed by the suggestion that Allende’s remarkable career originated from simply minding the needs of those closest to her: “If I don't write, I drive everybody nuts.” 

To Allende, writing is natural yet deliberate, the result of dedication and discipline. Her staunchly principled creative process is baked in routine. January 8th is the only day of the year when Allende allows herself to begin working on an idea. “Sometimes, January 7th I don’t have a story, but I know that if I show up every day in front of the computer, sooner or later, something is going to happen,” she explained. While working on a project, Allende sees it through to its end, and once finished, she waits until the 8th of January to begin the next. Her explanation for “why January 8th?” revealed an unsentimental pragmatism: “Because it’s a good day. It’s after the holidays. It’s fine.” Evidently, the choice is less about the calendar date and more about the commitment to the writing practice. A structure that requires Allende to plan carefully — organizing, preparing, “tell[ing] people ‘don’t bother me’” — leaves no room for procrastination.   

Guyer probed Allende about her creative practices, research methods, and sources of inspiration. Explaining that she is often asked about where she gets her ideas, Allende responded that “there are stories everywhere.” She described these stories as seeds in her belly, growing without her knowledge until they begin to bother her, appearing in dreams and knocking on a proverbial door, until she must face them. For her, inspiration comes from everywhere. I got the impression that it seeps through the floors and floats in the air, that it comes from people, history, and environment — and from within. 

“What I'm looking for in the research is the unheard, the silenced voices,” said Allende, on the writing process: “The voices of the people who were defeated, the voices of the women, the little young men who were drafted and didn't even know what they were fighting for, and would die alone. Even the animals. What happened to the horses? To the mules? To the dogs? That's what I'm interested in, and that's harder to find.” She explained that this information can be found in journals, letters, newspapers, even novels. Guyer inquired about parsing through details, what to build on, and what to exclude. “It's in the detail that you make the story believable, that you bring the reader into the story,” said Allende, describing a writing process rooted in asking questions, necessary to situate herself in the middle of the reality she hopes to portray. 

Later in the conversation, Guyer observed a trend: Allende does away with “clutter” in her literature in the same way as she does in her life. “I have been displaced most of my life, and I have had to start from scratch several times,” reflected Allende, adding that when you’re forced to walk away from everything, it can clarify what truly matters: “I don't remember what I left behind. It's gone. So all the material stuff is clutter because you can't take it with you, and you won't remember that you ever had it.” After her uncle, President Salvador Allende, was assassinated, she was forced into exile, fleeing Chile for Venezuela: “I got there because I was escaping, escaping for my life. And that's why most refugees come to this country or to any country, because they are trying to get away from a desperate situation. Why would you leave everything that you love, everything that is familiar to you, unless you're desperate?” Allende shared advice she offers those forced to leave their homes searching for safety, security, a better life: “You don't have to lose what you have. Bring it with you. Hold that with you, cherish it, preserve it: your language, your food, your music, your traditions, your sense of family, bring it with you.” 

When asked about her advice for young writers, thinkers, and students, Allende returned to a similar sentiment: “The only thing that I dare say to young people is take risks. Just take risks. There will be hurt and suffering, and so what? If you want to have a life, you have to have adventure.” Allende’s life has featured tremendous risk and adventure, as well as hurt and suffering: “From every test you come out stronger. You learn more. I've never learned anything from happiness. Nothing from happiness. Only from loss and pain.” Allende suffered the loss of her daughter, a tragedy which she writes about in her memoir Paula. “I never expected the reaction that I had,” she confessed, adding, “At the time, there was no email. So by snail mail, I got boxes and boxes, boxes of letters from everywhere. People telling me about their losses.” Questions from the audience — many of whom mentioned having read Allende’s books alongside their sisters, mothers, and grandmothers — expressed gratitude for her ability to capture such painful experiences in poignant, passionate, meaningful stories. 

Allende described her sense of human emotion and memory as transcending reason, taking on a magical quality: “I feel that my daughter is inside me, and I'm living the life that she couldn't live. I promised her when she was dying that I would try to be as she was, as open and generous as she was, and as compassionate as she was,” she reflected, adding with humor: “Of course, I have not achieved any of it, but at least I try.” Allende described communicating with those she’s lost, calling on them for guidance or inspiration, even while brushing her teeth in the mirror. “I have these spirits,” she claimed, “that accompany me all the time. . . . And I know it's just in my mind. It's an exercise in memory and in love. And that's the way I have been able to cope with grief. And the way I cope with the grief of losing my country is writing about it all the time.” I admired Allende’s intentionality, which she pours into her creative, emotional, professional, and personal work; her clarity; and her habit of appreciating what matters and rejecting the rest. 

Asked about surviving and creating art in authoritarian times, Allende urged Americans to be wary, to stay alarmed by the current state of our government, and not to wait to appreciate freedom until it’s gone. She reflected on what it was like to be in Chile when the democratic government fell. “What happened in Chile was so sudden, so brutal that there was no reaction,” she explained, describing mass curfews, arrests and disappearances, closure of academic institutions, abolition of political parties, and the suspension of Congress. Beyond the grim circumstances, Allende noticed and took part in subtle, gradual, even miraculous acts of resistance. “Resistance grows. It starts as a seed, and it starts to spread and spread until it reaches a critical number,” she explained, “And it is at that point of the critical number where things change, not before.” This is both her warning and her hope for people facing authoritarianism now: to remember that they aren’t fighting alone, that many small battles must be fought before it is possible to win the war. “It takes a long time, but that's the way it works. So, people, don't give up, don't give up, talk to each other, and believe that there's many more than we can see.”

Allende’s stories have touched millions of people, copies passing through their families, characters burrowing into their hearts. Her work has paved the way for young women who dream of writing and being taken seriously, respected for telling magical, emotional, honest stories. “It takes three times the effort of any man to get half the recognition and respect,” said Allende, reflecting on how feminism influences her understanding of the writing profession. Allende’s impact goes even further: in 1996 she created the Isabel Allende Foundation, dedicated to her daughter, which she contributes to annually with income from her books. She explained that the foundation aims to help vulnerable women and girls by focusing on three areas: education, “because a woman who cannot support herself cannot have any control of her life or her children”; health and reproductive rights, “because if you do not control your fertility, you don't control anything”; and protection from exploitation and violence, “because if you live in fear, you don't have a life.” Allende admitted that at times she feels discouraged, overwhelmed by the sheer number of people living with one or more of these limitations, aware of the impossibility of helping all of them. “My daughter-in-law always says, ‘You can't think that way. You have to think one life at a time, one person at a time,' . . . because if you think in numbers, it's really discouraging.” 

But perseverance is essential to Allende’s life and career; she is a testament to the human spirit — the writer’s spirit. To Allende, writing is essential not only to her career, but to her identity. Hard work, dedication, consistency, and effort all inform her life’s story. “I started working very young, and I worked all my life, and that has given me incredible freedom. But what has defied me is not work, it's writing,” she said. “I found my voice as a writer when I was 40 years old, and in the last 43 years, I have slowly but surely become myself by creating each one of these characters that has something that I am exploring, something that I need to know, something that belongs to me or to my past. So it is the writing that has kept me . . . alive inside, it gave me a voice, it gave me a light. It gave me a purpose that I didn't have before. Before, my life was so banal; it was just hard work. And now, I do the hard work with so much joy.” 

Allende was cheeky, quick on her feet, with a bright, warm disposition, showing no bitterness or contempt for having lived through such harsh circumstances. It seemed that writing had saved her, freed her. I left the event feeling immensely fortunate to live at the same time as someone so incredible, to have access to any quantity of her in her writing, to have witnessed her think and speak in real time.

View the video of Isabel Allende in Conversation with Dean Sara Guyer.