Casa de las America’s Awards 2016

BACKGROUND [Editor's Note]

The Casa de las Américas Prize (Premio Literario Casa de las Américas) is a literary award given by the Cuban Casa de las Américas. Established in 1959, it is one of Latin America’s oldest and most prestigious literary prizes. The award is presented for works in Spanish, Portuguese, English, and French by writers from Latin America and the Caribbean. In addition to the main categories of fiction, poetry, and essays, there are categories for narrative and children's literature.

The award was founded in 1959 as the Hispanic American Literary Competition (Concurso Literario Hispanoamericano), as a Latin American counterpart to the British Booker Prize and the U.S. Pulitzer Prize. It was renamed as the Latin American Literary Competition (Concurso Literario Latinoamericano) in 1964, and has been presented under its current name since 1965.

Since 1960, the main categories are novels, poetry, short stories, drama, and essays in Spanish. In 1970, a new category was added for testimonial narratives, and in 1973, the awards in the essay and testimonio categories were expanded to include works in Portuguese by Brazilian authors. A category for children's literature was added in 1975, and works by Caribbean authors in English and French have been eligible in all genres of fiction since 1976 and 1978, respectively. Since 1978, works by Brazilian authors in Portuguese are eligible in all categories. In 2000, three honorary awards were established in the categories narrative, essay, and poetry. Due to the growing diversity of genres and categories, awards in some categories are now presented in alternate years, and awards are not always presented in every category.

Judging panels for the awards are made up of prominent writers, academics, and intellectuals from throughout Latin America. Scholars and writers who have won the prize include Edward Brathwaite, Humberto Costantini, Eduardo Galeano, Renato Prada Oropeza, Susana Rotker, Françoise Perus, Beatriz González-Stephan and Luis Britto García. Among them are many recipients whose work was virtually unknown and who are now widely read and translated into many languages, such as Jorge Enrique Adoum and Roque Dalton. The Casa de las Américas Prize has been credited with attracting international attention to Latin American literature, and with contributing to a major literary renaissance that resulted in the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to writers such as Pablo Neruda in 1971 and Gabriel García Márquez in 1982. (Credit: Wikipedia)

2016 AWARDS

On January 29, 2016 00:01:40, the winners of the Literary Award 2016 Casa de las Americas were announced. After many days of intense deliberation since January 18th, between Havana and Cienfuegos, the winners were announced in the Che Guevara Hall. They are as follows:

• Cuban Legna Rodriguez Iglesias won the award in Theater, for the play, If This Is A Tragedy, I'm A Bike. The judges concluded that the play was poignant, “Because it is a work about death, and the power of love, which touched the diverse audience with every scene”. The judging panel was made up of Mexican Alejandro Roman Bahena, Brazilian André Carreira Mariana Percovich of Uruguay, Peru's Luis A. Garcia, and the Cuban Ramos Fatima Patterson. Auction (Sketch No. 1 of the Diaspora series), by Liz Laura Gil Echenique of Cuba; Yellow, Dream Road, by Roger Orizondo also of Cuba, and Two Pair Odyssey (Farce of the Empire), by Mariano Saba of Argentina, received Honourable Mentions in the Theater segment.

• In the story telling segment, the short story, Not A Single Voice In Heaven, by Argentine Ariel Urquiza, was selected as the winning work by the judging panel, which comprised Pedro Juan Gutiérrez of Cuba, Santiago Gamboa of Colombia, Ana Quiroga of Argentina, Eduardo Lalo of Puerto Rico, and Ramiro Sanchiz of Uruguay.

• During the ceremony an award was given for the Essay, Of The Ashes To The Text: Andean Literatures Of Sexual Dissidence In The Twentieth Century, by Trávez Diego Falconi of Ecuador; while Honourable Mentions were given to the works, Afloat: Two Decades Of Art In Cuba, by Mailyn Machado, and Wandering Hearts: Where Is My World? by Joaquin Borges Triana, both of whom are from Cuba.

• For the second year in the competition, the Studies Award On Indigenous Cultures Of America, went to Colombian Miguel Rocha Vivas, for Mingas of the Word: Oralitegráficas Textualities and Visions of His Head on the Oralituras and Contemporary Indian Literature.

• Finally, for the piece Devotees and Devassos: It Representação Two Fathers and Pious Literature Brasileira Na Anticlerical, Cristian Santos won the Brazilian Award in Literature; while Le Bataillon Creole (Guerre 1914-1918) by Raphael Confiant of Martinique, won The Caribbean Literature in French or Creole. Honorable Mention went to Ernest Pepin of Guadaloupe for the poem, Guadeloupe Ouvre Ses Ailes Froisseés.