Premio Casa de las Américas Prize Goes to Argentinian

by María Elena Cruz -- Críticas, 2/15/2007

Writers from various parts of Latin America gathered in Cuba January 15–25 to celebrate the 48th Casa de las Américas literary awards. Argentina’s Susana Silvestre won the prize in the Novel category for Mil y una (“A Thousand and One”). Jurors selected the winning work from 115 submissions for “[the novel’s] fluid, clean, and graceful prose; her intelligent, complex…structure; and for representing a challenge to the trends of major publishing companies.” Silvestre is a prolific writer and journalist. The author of several novels, short stories, and a biography, she is also a playwright and screenwriter.

Winners in other categories include Alberto Abreu’s (Cuba) Los juegos de la escritura o la (re) escritura de la Historia (“The Games of Writing or Re-writing History”) for Artistic/Literary Essay; Rafael Spregelburd’s (Argentina) Heptalogía de Hieronymus Bosch: 6. La Paranoia (“Hieronymus Bosch’s Heptalogy 6: Paranoia”) for Theater; Edda Fabbri’s (Uruguay) Oblivion for Testimonial Literature, and Ana Maria Gonçalves’s Um defeito de cor (“A Defect of Color”) for Brazilian Literature.

Jurors evaluated almost 500 manuscripts from 18 countries. The Casa de las Américas organization was founded by the Cuban Government right after the 1959 Cuban Revolution. It promotes, encourages, and awards the works of Latin American writers, musicians, and artists. The winning works will be published by Casa de las Américas, under the Premios imprint.