Until June 2, 2022, Colombian women will be able to participate in the third edition of the Elisa Mújica National Narrative Award, which is being carried out by the District Institute of Arts (Idartes) in partnership with Laguna Libros, an independent publisher.
This initiative was born in 2018 as a commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Colombian writer Elisa Mújica, and seeks to ponder the work of a Colombian writer who writes any kind of narratives, whether fiction or non-fiction, in genres such as novel, story, literary essay, chronicle and testimony, as well as can participate with a compilation of texts.
The winner will be announced on November 15 of this year and will receive an economic stimulus of $32,000,000 and the publication of the work in Laguna Libros.
Interested parties must submit a work that must be unpublished, that is, it has not been published in any digital or printed media and not previously received recognition. It should be noted that the prize works under anonymous mode, so participants must not reveal their identity anywhere in the proposal. If they do, they will be disqualified.
The full rules of the call can be found here.
In the first version of the prize, the winner was Cristina Bendek, with her novel The Salt Crystals, which has been translated into Portuguese (Editora Moinhos, 2021), Danish (Northern Lights, 2020) and English (Charco Press, 2022). It was also published in Costa Rica (Encino Ediciones, 2020).
In the 2020 edition, the winner was Laura Ortiz Gómez, with her storybook Sofoco, which has also been published in Spain (Barret, 2021), Argentina (Concreto, 2021), Chile (Laurel, 2022) and Italy (Gran Via, 2022).
In this regard, Adriana Martínez-Villalba, Director of Literature at Idartes stressed that: “the authors who won this Prize have been widely read, have been widely received in critics and their works have positioned themselves in contemporary Colombian narrative”.
He added that: “Since Idartes we have seen that, since the birth of Elisa Mújica, the participation of women in literary stimuli has grown significantly, which accounts for a rich ecosystem of women writers in practice. With the help of Laguna Libros, a publisher with an already very solid catalog, we invite all writers, regardless of their career, to submit their proposals.”
Mujica spent most of her life in Bogotá, despite being born in Bucaramanga in 1918. And during his life he worked as a cultural journalist, reviewing and commenting on books for different newspapers and magazines. He also worked at the Ministry of Communications and the Colombian Embassy in Quito.
His literary work includes the novels The Two Times (1949), Catalina (1963) and Bogotá de las Nubes (1984); the storybooks Angela and the Devil (1953), Tree of Wheels (1972) and The Shop of Images (1987); and the children's books The Botanical Expedition told to children (1978), Bestiario (1980), Little Bestiary (1990), The houses that speak: historical guide to the neighborhood of La Candelaria in Santa Fe in Bogotá (1994) and Tales for children of La Candelaria (1997).
He also ventured into the essay, with books such as The Indian in America: Synthesis of American Works on the Indigenous Problem (1948), The High Towers of Smoke: Roots of the Folk Story in Colombia (1985) and Sister Francisca Josefa de Castillo (1991).
In 1962 she received a special distinction from the Esso Prize for her novel Catalina. She was the first woman to be a full member of the Colombian Academy of Language, a position she obtained in 1984, and was also elected as a corresponding Hispano-American member of the Royal Spanish Academy.
KEEP READING:
Últimas Noticias
Debanhi Escobar: they secured the motel where she was found lifeless in a cistern
The oldest person in the world died at the age of 119
Macabre find in CDMX: they left a body bagged and tied in a taxi
The eagles of America will face Manchester City in a duel of legends. Here are the details
Why is it good to bring dogs out to know the world when they are puppies
