Madrid Spain.- Cuban writer Antonio Orlando Rodríguez won the XVIII SM Ibero-American Prize for Children’s and Young People’s Literature for his career in literature for children and young people from Ibero-America.
The jury, whose decision was unanimous, stated that Orlando Rodríguez “is capable of summoning the past and the present from a singularity that will continue to open new ways of feeling, thinking and inhabiting the world.”
Just as he considered that his “work poetically integrates various traditions and registers that sail from his native Caribbean to other latitudes, transcending geographical, linguistic and generational limits.”
This jury was made up of Macarena García González, from the Regional Center for the Promotion of Books in Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLALC); Guadalupe Alemán Lascurain, from the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI); Fanuel Hanán Díaz, from the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY Mexico); Rodrigo Morlesin, from the Office in Mexico of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); and Sergio Tanhnuz, from the SM Foundation.
Along with Antonio Orlando Rodríguez, nominated by the Fundación Cuatrogatos, another 23 writers from Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Spain, Guatemala, Mexico, Paraguay, Portugal and Uruguay opted for recognition.
The prize, endowed with thirty thousand dollars, will be awarded on November 29 at 6:00 p.m. at the Guadalajara International Book Fair.
Since its creation in 2005, the SM Iberoamerican Prize for Children’s and Youth Literature has been convened annually. Among its winners have been María Teresa Andruetto (Argentina, 2009); Laura Devetach (Argentina, 2010); Jordi Sierra i Fabra (Spain, 2013); Maria Cristina Ramos (Argentina, 2016); Marina Colasanti (Brazil, 2017); and María José Ferrada (Chile, 2021).
Antonio Orlando Rodríguez, also a cultural promoter and literary researcher, was born in Ciego de Ávila, Cuba, in 1956. He began his literary career on the island, where he developed it until 1991, the year he emigrated to Costa Rica.
Since 1999 he has lived in the United States, where he created and currently directs, together with Sergio Andricaín, the Fourcats Foundation, a non-profit that “works in favor of culture and education, with an emphasis on children and young people”; as well as “bringing the Spanish-speaking community of Miami and other cities in the United States closer to reading, the arts, and spaces for formal and non-formal education as powerful tools for the improvement of individuals and society.”
Among other recognitions, Rodríguez received at the 2008 the Alfaguara Novel Prize, for his work petite; and in 2010 he was selected among the 100 most outstanding Latinos in Miami.
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