The young Cuban playwright and poet Taimi Dieguez (Havana, 1990) was one of the winners of the 2022 edition of the International Writers in Residence Program in Granada, Spain, within the City of Literature-Unesco program.
The other winner was the Dutchman Frank Westerman, one of the most outstanding contemporary European essayists, according to the agency Eph.
Frank Westerman (Netherlands) and Taimi Diéguez (Cuba) are the 2022 winners of the Granada International Writers-in-Residence Program. Congratulations! We are waiting for you at the Corrala de Santiago de la @CanalUGR next November 3. pic.twitter.com/6hde9eojjU
— Granada UNESCO City of Literature (@ciudad_granada) October 5, 2022
This year the record for applications has been broken, with a total of 180 arrivals from 54 countries, highlighted the Councilor for Culture, María de Leyva, who also highlighted the “extremely high quality” of the candidacies that have been presented.
In this sense, he underlined that a “first-rate” essayist and a young promise of poetry and essays are going to write about Granada thanks to this call from the UNESCO Cities of Literature network.
For his choice, as detailed by the person in charge of Culture, the jury has taken into account the literary quality of his texts, the rigor and seriousness of his artistic approaches and his ambitious work proposal in Granada.
Diéguez (Havana, 1990), is one of the most outstanding promises of the young generation of writers in Cuba, graduated in Dramaturgy at the University of the Arts (ISA), and deserving of several awards in Cuba, including the Fundación de the City of Matanzas and the Loynaz Brothers of Narrative.
He also obtained the Coral Horse (2009), The Kingdom of this World (2018) and the Luis Orlando Suárez Tajonera Production (2017) scholarships, as well as a Mention in the Virgilio Piñera Dramaturgy Award (2016) for the also editor of the Tablas-Alarcos Publishing House and professor of Theater History at ISA.
For his part, Frank Westerman (The Netherlands, 1964), an engineer by training and a journalist by profession, began his career as a writer in the so-called “fact literature”, put into circulation in Europe by Richard Kapuscinski.
Among the dozens of books he has published, stand out soul engineers (Siruela, 2005), black and me (Ocean, 2007), Ararat (Siruela, 2008), The fate of the white horses (Siruela, 2013) and Killer Valley. On the origin of myths (Siruela, 2017).
Organized by Granada UNESCO City of Literature and the University, the residency program is the only one of its kind promoted from the municipal level by an Andalusian city.
It was created with the aim of reinforcing international cooperation in the cultural sector and literary creation, one of the objectives that the city of Granada has set for itself with its membership of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN).
In previous editions, this residency has been won by Iosi Havilio (Argentina) and Paulina Flores (Chile), Kirsty Logan (United Kingdom) and Petra Zist (Slovenia), Sahar Delijani (Iran-United States) and Aleksandra Lipczak (Poland) and Marli Roode (South Africa-United Kingdom) and Luciana Jazmín Coronado (Argentina).
Efe/OnCuba.
