Isabel Martínez

Today marks the 400th anniversary of the death of Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), whose masterpiece, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha (1605), is recognized as the first modern novel in Spanish, and a kind of bridge between the medieval and the modern in the evolution of the language. In a recent interview with the journalist Virginia Bautista, the prominent Mexican author Ignacio Padilla, himself a specialist in Cervantes’s work, describes Don Quixote as “the catalyst for the birth of modern Spanish.”

Continue reading →

Claudio Durán

Chilean-Canadian poet Jorge Etcheverry, one of the most important figures in Hispanic Canadian literature, turned 70 this year. On the occasion of his 70^th birthday, fellow Chilean-Canadian writer Claudio Durán offered him the following tribute.

Continue reading →

Mexican poet Manuel Acuña was born in Coahuila on August 27, 1849 and died in Mexico City on December 6, 1873. He was an important exponent of Mexico’s Romantic movement, and member of a literary circle that included important figures of Mexican literature like Ignacio Manuel Altamirano and Agustín F. Cuenca. Although he took his life at 24, he had an extremely productive literary life and is recognized as a major Mexican literary figure. One of his most outstanding works is “Nocturno”, translated below, which he dedicated to Rosario de la Peña, with whom he had fallen in love and who is believed to be one of the reasons for his suicide.

Continue reading →

Pilgrim

Spanish poet Luis Cernuda, born in Seville in 1902, was one of the main figures in the so-called “Generation of ’27”, the movement of Spanish poets that also included his friend Federico García Lorca. After Lorca’s murder in 1936 and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Cernuda began the exile from which he would never return, first in the United Kingdom, then the United States, and finally, Mexico, where he died in 1963. His work is characterized by a style described by many as neo-Romantic, with a focus on the themes of solitude, desire and his personal experience of exile.

Continue reading →

Guillermo Rose, founder of the nuestra palabra contest

Since its first edition in 2004, the nuestra palabra Short Story Competition has become the most important annual event in the nascent realm of Hispanic Canadian literature. The contest has recognized the talents of both new and established Hispanic Canadian writers of short fiction, and contributed to the creation of a space in Canada for literature for the Spanish speakers, the fastest growing minority language community in the country.

Continue reading →

Closing our series of English translations of the first prize winners in the first ten years of the nuestra palabra short story competition is another story by Francisco García González, the Cuban-born author, screenwriter and journalist based in the Montreal suburb of Brossard, Quebec, who is the only writer to have won the nuestra palabra contest twice (he also won in 2011, with “Remember Clifford“). The story “El odio también envejece” (translated here by David Morsillo, under the title “Hate Also Ages You”), won first prize in the tenth edition of the competition, in 2013.

Continue reading →

Delma Gil Wilson, the winner of the 2012 edition of the nuestra palabra short story competition, was born in Álamos, Mexico in 1980. She completed a bachelor’s degree in Hispanic Literatures at Universidad de Sonora en México, and a Master’s in Spanish and Latin American Studies at the University of Alberta. She has written for newspapers and magazines in both Mexico and Canada, including Cambio Sonora, Correo Canadiense, El Hispano and The Apostles Review. She has worked as both a translator and proofreader and currently teaches Spanish at the University of Alberta.

Continue reading →

Néstor E. Rodríguez was born in the Dominican Republic in 1971. He is the author of the books Escrituras de desencuentro en la República Dominicana (México: Siglo XXI, 2005), which earned him Mexico’s Premio al Pensamiento Caribeño award, and Crítica para tiempos de poco fervor (Santo Domingo: Banco Central de la República Dominicana, 2009), as well as the poem collections Animal pedestre (San José: Terranova, 2004) and El desasido (Mexico City: El billar de Lucrecia, 2009). He is professor of literature at the University of Toronto. His poem “Abandonar la casa”, translated into English by David Morsillo, is published here with the author’s permission.

Continue reading →

Francisco García González, first prize winner of the 2011 nuestra palabra short story competition, is a writer, editor, and screenwriter born in Havana in 1965 and currently living in Montreal. His short story collections include Juegos permitidos [Games Allowed] (1994), Color local [Local Colour] (1999), and ¡Qué quieren las mujeres? [What Do Women Want?] (2003). He has also published the historical essay, Presidio Modelo, temas escondidos [Model Prison, Hidden Agendas] in 2002. His stories have appeared in anthologies in Cuba, Spain and Canada. He won Cuba’s Hemingway Short Story Prize in 1999, and has served as editor of the cultural journal Habáname. His articles have appeared in periodicals in Cuba, Mexico, Chile and the United States.

Continue reading →