María Esther Vázquez

María Esther Vázquez (4 August 1937 – 25 March 2017) was an Argentine writer and journalist, best known as a collaborator and biographer of Jorge Luis Borges and Victoria Ocampo.

Biography She was born in Buenos Aires in 1937 into a family of Galician descent. Her father was born in Cambados, and her mother in Vilanova de Arousa. At 16, she entered the Universidad de Buenos Aires to study literature. In 1957, while working at the National Library, she met the library's director, Jorge Luis Borges. He introduced her to his fellow writers from Sur magazine.

At the beginning of the '60s, she dated Borges, and in February 1964 they announced their marriage, although several months later they split up. They remained friends and wrote a couple of books together. Vázquez wrote a biography on Borges, ten years after his death, called Borges: Esplendor y derrota (Borges: Splendor and Defeat).

Personal life She married poet and writer Horacio Armani on 14 December 1965. They were married for nearly 50 years before his death in 2013.

She died in Buenos Aires in March 2017 of a cerebral hemorrhage.

Honors Her honors included: 1988: Order of Merit of the Italian Republic 1987: Konex Award 1995: Comillas Prize of the Tusquets Publishing House in Spain 1997: Prize of the International Book Fair of Buenos Aires 2004: Konex Award 2012: Rosalía de Castro Award from the PEN Club of Galicia 2012: the Gold Medal of Emigration from the Federation of Spanish Societies of Argentina