The Hermanos Saíz Association celebrates the work of young writers with the Calendar 2023 Awards. Author: Juan Carlos Borjas
With great joy, the organization, which brings together creators aged 16 to 35 from all over the country, is celebrating the presentation of awards for the most outstanding literature recently written by young people on the 31st. International Book Fair in Havana.
The Calendar Prizes, since their inception, have been the highest literary award given by the Hermanos Saíz Association. The Nicolás Guillén Hall of the fortress of San Carlos de la Cabaña, like every February, witnessed this year’s talents being awarded in various categories.
The young writer Gisele Lucia Navarro Delgado earned recognition in the Children and Youth section for her book. perfect child. “In this case, the Calendar Award will allow me to publish my sixth book, a novel about discrimination and identity. The protagonist is an autistic child, and there are other infants with disabilities among the secondary characters. This is a text that, although narrated in the third person, constantly looks at the context; which is fictional but has a lot in common with Cuban reality. For a long moment in the story, this perspective is told through the eyes of children: this is the overall thread of the story,” he said. rebellious youth.
“The Calendar Prize is an award of great importance in the Cuban literary field, because it has made a kind of very extensive record of a large part of the last two generations of writers that exist in Cuba today. This delivery makes me very happy because although this is not my first book, it is a confirmation of the work I have been doing for a long time in the field of storytelling for children and young people,” said the 2019 David Poetry Award winner. .
High voltage cables, written by Onel Pérez Izaguirre, was honored for the occasion in the Poetry category. According to the statements proposed by the author Jr, “This book has gone through a few moments, but a period of purification has been essential to its evolution. This is a literary work that looks at society with the inquisitive gaze of a machine; an artifact that observes and controls everything.
“Receiving an award from AHS is an impulse that fills me with emotions and good mood, as it opens the door to recognition in a national context. This is a way, no doubt, to reward the victim and many hours before a clean page, ”said the writer.
At the theater, Juan Edilberto Sosa Torres received a prize for his work. Metro. The young man commented to this newspaper that the winning entry is a text written around 2016: “It was one of my first entries. There is also the addition that this was one of the texts that I was able to view through the stage: it came about thanks to the stage and all the investigative processes that we developed in the La Caja Negra stage experiments group, which I direct in Santiago de Cuba.
“There is a lot of mirror play in this work, where the audience can at some point be an element of representation, and the actor, in turn, can also be the audience. The book is permeated with the relationship between the work and the spectator, and this suggests that the audience passes through a space of representation, where it automatically assumes the state of the performer under the gaze of another, which may be another spectator or the actor himself.
“Metro brings with it many literary and theatrical references to the postmodern. He also talks about femicide, something that is present in modern societies. The text refers to such actions that are contrary to human nature, ”said Sosa Torres.
For the author, “to receive this award means to legitimize the theatrical composition, which I have been researching for several years, not only from texts, but also from the stage. Demonstrating this through such an important award is confirmation of the correctness of this search. It has the added value of being run by publisher Abril and running as part of the fair. I am very grateful. I hope that the other jury, which will be the public, will also give him a good qualification.”
Martha Acosta Alvarez was honored in the Science Fiction category. Refugees, a work in which he tells “two parallel stories in a post-apocalyptic context. On the one hand, a mother and her son are fighting back on Earth in a hostile environment; on the other hand, a privileged young man is waiting on a spaceship for the moment to return to the planet. They go through very difficult situations, but this does not extinguish their desire to live.
“Being part of the Calendar Award collection will help the book find readers. This is an award with a beautiful history. When I didn’t dream about publishing yet, I always looked for works marked with this award in bookstores, ”explained the creator.
In the Essay section, Luis Emilio Aibar Toledo was awarded the work. Revolutionary ideology in action. View from the industrial sector (1961-1965)Bye wild and blissfulRubiel Alejandro González Labarta was recognized as an entry in the Short Story category.
In addition, Yasmani Rodriguez Alfaro was mentioned with cat’s eyes, in Children and Youth; Norge Luis Labrada Gutierrez, c black grassand Jose Ernesto Novaez Guerrero with Dream of reason in poetry and Daryl Ortega Gonzalez with Difficult in the story.
As every year, AHS, in an effort to promote young art throughout Cuba, has presented the awards given last year, which are and will be sold through the distribution network and at organizational presentations throughout 2023.
Source: Juventud Rebelde