Chilean writer, acclaimed novelist and memoirist Isabel Allende returns to Chapman University as part of the John Fowles Literary Series on Friday, Oct. 25, at 7:30 p.m. in Memorial Hall. The event is free and open to the public.

Allende won worldwide acclaim when her best-selling first novel, The House of the Spirits, was published in 1982. In addition to launching Allende’s career as a renowned author, the book, which grew out of a farewell letter to her dying grandfather, the book also established her as a feminist force in Latin America’s male-dominated literary world.

She has since written nearly 20 more works, including Of Love and Shadows, Eva Luna, Stories of Eva Luna, The Infinite Plan, Daughter of Fortune, Portrait in Sepia, a trilogy for young readers (City of Beasts, Kingdom of the Golden Dragon, and Forest of Pygmies), Zorro, Ines of My Soul, and Island Beneath the Sea. Books of nonfiction include Aphrodite, a humorous collection of recipes and essays, and three memoirs: My Invented Country, Paula (a bestseller that documents Allende’s daughter’s illness and death, as well as her own life), and The Sum of Our Days. Her latest book, a novel, is Maya’s Notebook  (to be published in English in 2013).