Bayly Letts, Jaime (1965–)

Jaime Bayly Letts, a Peruvian journalist, writer, and television show host, was born in Lima on February 19, 1965. He started working on the conservative newspaper La Prensa in the early 1980s. A right-winger, he promoted Mario Vargas Llosa's presidential candidacy in 1990. The late-night show 1990 en América was his first success in Peruvian TV; he interviewed celebrities and politicians with provocative and almost disrespectful questions, copying the style of the American talk-show host David Letterman. In Miami, he hosted late-night shows for the CBS and Telemundo networks.

Bayly presents himself as a bisexual; his first novel No se lo digas a nadie (1996, Don't Tell Anybody), became a gay fiction bestseller and later a movie in 1998. He has written ten novels. La noche es virgen (1997, Night Is a Virgin) won the Spanish Herralde prize in 1997. His most recent novel is Y de repente, un ángel (1995, And Suddenly, an Angel). He was distinguished in May 2007 with a media award from the gay and lesbian alliance against defamation (GLAAD) in South Florida.

See alsoHomosexuality and Bisexuality in Literature; Radio and Television.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ruiz Bravo, Patricia. Subversiones masculinas: Imágenes de los varones en la narrativa joven [Masculine Subversions: Male Images in the Young's Narrative.] Lima: Flora Tristán, 2001. A critical work about No se lo digas a nadie (Don't Tell Anybody).

Spanish News Agency EFE. "Jaime Bayly, una figura destacada de la nueva literatura en español." El Mundo, Barcelona, October 22th, 2005. Available from http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2005/10/16/cultura/1129463511.html.

                                    Jacqueline Fowks