Carmen Rodríguez (born June 19, 1948) is a Chilean-Canadian author, poet, educator, political social activist, and a founding member of Aquelarre Magazine.

[4] Rodríguez translates her work until "[she feels] that both tips of [her] tongue and [her] two sets of ears were satisfied with the final product.

'"[1] Rodríguez's major works are and a body to remember with, a collection of short stories, and Guerra Prolongada/Protracted War, a collection of poems in both English and Spanish Rodríguez's first publication was a short story submitted for an annual literary competition in Chile in 1972, for which she received an honorable mention.

[6] Carmen Rodríguez was born and raised in a lower-middle-class family in Valdivia, Chile, where she lived until she was 25.

Later on, Rodríguez taught at the University of Chile in Santiago as a professor of English in the Faculty of Philosophy and Education.

[9] At the time of the coup, which occurred on September 11, Rodríguez was teaching at the University of Austral in the south of Chile.

Although she did not belong to any official political parties at the time, she did express support for the socialist project, which resulted in the addition of her name to Augusto Pinochet's military blacklist of "people required to turn themselves in".

[9] Her experiences of fleeing Chile, being forced into exile, and being torn between two cultures, have played a central role in Rodríguez's writing.

[11][12] Upon their arrival, Rodríguez enrolled in graduate school at the University of British Columbia in order to study literature.

[3] That year, Rodríguez, along with her daughters and Bob, her Canadian partner, traveled to Argentina and Bolivia to "collaborate with the armed resistances organization, the Movement for the Revolutionary Left (MIR)",[10] a socialist party.

[10] She then divorced her husband whom she married in Chile and started a relationship with a Canadian man named Bob, who is now deceased.

She was the chair of the Writers' Union of Canada's Union Racial Minority Writers Committee and Social Justice Taskforce,[12] as well as being a founding member of the Aquelarre Collective, a feminist group responsible for the production of Aquelarre Magazine.

[17] Often, her works are composed in Spanish, and then reworked in English, or vice versa, "involving a process of back and forth" between the two languages.

She translates her literary work more than once, until "I felt that both tips of my tongue and my two sets of ears were satisfied with the final product....this process mirrors my hyphenated existence.

[29] She helped organize an art exhibit in Vancouver in 1987, attended by many Chilean women, one of whom stayed with Rodríguez.

[29] This woman "suggested that the exiled Chileans create a magazine to share their accomplishments with other women, in and outside of Canada".

[29] It was important to Rodríguez that the magazine be bilingual so that it would be accessible to women both in Canada and Latin America.

Rodríguez's and a body to remember with, a collection of short stories, has been described as an exploration of "how hard it can be to re-root oneself" during exile.

[34] Guerra Prolongada/Protracted War is a collection of poems composed and translated by Carmen Rodríguez which serves as a historical account of the 1973 Chilean coup.

[18] Her book has a strong feminist component, but Rodríguez also includes other social issues in her writing.