The Cuban writer Antonio Orlando Rodríguez won, unanimously by the jury, the XVIII SM Ibero-American Prize for Children’s and Youth Literature, an award endowed with 30,000 dollars that he will collect at the Guadalajara International Book Fair (Mexico) on November 29.
It is a recognition of a career in which he is able to summon the past and the present from a singularity that will continue to open new ways of feeling, thinking and inhabiting the world, in the opinion of the jury, the SM editorial reported this Friday.
He also valued that the author’s writing, of indisputable strength and quality, awakens the imagination of readers in ways that renew astonishment” adding that his “work poetically integrates various traditions and registers that sail from his native Caribbean to other latitudes , transcending geographical, linguistic and generational boundaries.
Antonio Orlando Rodríguez (Cuba, 1956) began his literary career in children and youth with “Granny Miracle” (1975), which has been followed by more than fifty fiction books for this public with publishers from different countries.
After living in Costa Rica and Colombia, he has lived in the United States since 1999, where he created and directs, together with Sergio Andricaín, the Cuatrogatos Foundation, dedicated to the promotion of reading and the study of children’s and youth books in Spanish.
Rodríguez began his literary career in the children’s and youth sphere with “Abuelita Milagro” (1975), which has been followed by more than fifty books
For this edition of the award, 23 applications were received – the Cuatrogatos Foundation proposed the final winner – from Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Spain, Guatemala, Mexico, Paraguay, Portugal and Uruguay, of which thirteen were the finalists.
The SM Ibero-American Prize for Children’s and Youth Literature has recognized, among others, the Spaniards Juan Farias, Montserrat del Amo y Gili or Jordi Sierra i Fabra; the Argentines María Teresa Andruetto, Laura Devetach and Graciela Montes; the Colombian Gloria Cecilia Díaz, the Mexican María Baranda or the Chilean María José Ferrada. History of the SM Iberoamerican Prize for Children’s and Youth Literature
Created by the SM Foundation in 2005, the award has the collaboration of the Office of the United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture in Mexico (Unesco), the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) , the Organization of Ibero-American States for Education, Science and Culture (OEI) and the Regional Center for the Promotion of Books in Latin America and the Caribbean (Cerlalc).
Reina María Rodríguez will also receive, on November 10, the La Avellaneda Medal 2022, the highest award granted by the Cuban Cultural Center in New York. One of the most representative poets in literature, Rodríguez has sought to “develop a complex philosophical voice, creating a space for difference within an ideologically saturated environment,” the institution acknowledged.
Reina María Rodríguez will also receive the La Avellaneda Medal 2022, the highest award granted by the Cuban Cultural Center in New York
Rodríguez, born in Havana in 1952, is recognized for her advocacy in alternative cultural spaces. So much so that, for three decades, she used her own home to create a literary center, known informally as the Queen’s rooftop. From the book of him” The people in my neighborhood (1978) until his last work “ Docks” (2022), his poetry is characterized by a commitment to the social and political reality of the Island.
Her pen has led her to receive several awards, including twice the Casa de las Américas Awards (1984 and 1998), three National Critics Awards (1992, 1995 and 1999), and two Julián de Casal Awards (1980 and 1983). ). In addition, in 2013, she won the National Prize for Literature, the highest literary award in Cuba, and the Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Poetry Prize in 2014.
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