Two Cuban writers living outside the Island deserved important literary prizes these days. They are the novelist Agustín Labrada Aguilera, who lives in Mexico, and the poet Oneyda González González, who lives in the United States.
In the case of Labrada Aguilera, who lives in the Mexican city of Cancún but was born in Holguín, he was announced as the winner of the Spanish Short Novel contest “Fundación Monte León” with his work russian boots.
As reported by the ninth edition of the contest, russian boots impacted the jury because it is “a story with a nuance of customs and a simple plot” whose “psychological description of the characters, the evocative tone and the closeness provided by the first-person narration make reading it a personal experience full of lyricism ”.
“The work is a bright contrast between the nudity of poverty and the adolescent discovery of love and sexuality,” says the note, which argues how difficult it was for the members of the jury to select due to the quality of many of the 427 shipments from countries such as Argentina, Madrid, Mexico, Colombia or Peru, in addition to several Spanish regions.
Born in 1964, Agustín Labrada has lived in the Mexican Caribbean for a long time, because “he cannot get away from the sea.” From Cancún he has published twelve books in the modalities of poetry, essay and cultural journalism. In recent years, the note points out, he has written “in silence stories and novels that will one day see the light.”
The writer from Holguin studied Literature and Communication Sciences and works at the Institute of Culture and Arts of Quintana Roo. He considers that his novel is “a torn story of my adolescence in which, although it belongs to the realm of fiction, there are testimonial references that leave an emotional trace in memory.”
The award ceremony will take place next October, and the presence of the winner is expected, who will receive the amount of 6,000 euros stipulated in the contest rules, as well as 50 copies of the edition of the novel russian bootswhich will be carried out by Eolas Ediciones.
Meanwhile, Oneyda González, a Camagüeyan resident in Miami, won the 2022 Peace Prize for Poetry, as announced by the Miami Book Fair from Miami Dade College (MDC) along with the National Poetry Series.
It is a biennial award that honors the late Mexican poet and Nobel Prize for Literature winner Octavio Paz with his name and is awarded to an unpublished collection of poems, written in Spanish by a poet living in the United States.
González got it with his book the infinite loopwhich was chosen by the poet Lourdes Vazquezwho served as a judge for the contest, and will be published in a bilingual edition (Spanish and English) by the prestigious independent publisher Akashic Books.
“I am very excited that the Miami Book Fair Peace Prize has been awarded to my book ‘El Lazo Infinito’. Writing a book is a learning process, and it is very pleasing to know that it is read with utility and affection”, commented the award-winning author, quoted by the organizers of the award.
“I feel that the Peace Prize is an event interested in expanding the links between the cultures that coexist in this country by offering the possibility that the texts of Latino writers be read in both languages,” added Oneyda, who is also a narrator and essayist, and she has a degree in Education, specializing in Literature and Spanish, as well as a Master’s in Latin American Culture and Thought.
As announced, his winning collection of poems will be presented during the Miami Book Fair in November 2023.
