The Argentine-Mexican Writer Sandra Lorenzano Wins the XV Málaga Essay Prize

A Recognition for Literature: 39 Applicants for the 6,000 Euro Prize

A total of 39 originals applied for this edition of the award, endowed with 6,000 euros and organized by the City Council of the Spanish city of Malaga (south) in collaboration with the publishing house Páginas de Espuma, which will publish the winning work.

In a message released after the reading of the ruling, Lorenzano was "very excited" to receive this award "which over the years has built bridges between Spain and Latin America."

She added that many of the names that received it in previous years, such as the Mexican Ignacio Padilla, the Argentine Blas Matamoro, or the Spanish Nuria Barrios, are part of her "history as a reader."

"We are all inhabitants of the homeland of the eñe, and the embrace of this shared language is the abode that allows us to sustain spaces of hope," said Lorenzano, who believes that the literary word "is more necessary than ever."

The jury, which awarded the prize unanimously, highlighted that, in this text, the author "returns to the theme of exile and migration, one of the constituent problems of the modern condition, through a style of fractures, allusions and evocations ".

Lorenzano's Personal Experience: Symbolic and Imaginary Shores

Furthermore, Lorenzano highlights an approach to the genre of the essay "in which the what and the how dialogue in a fertile conversation with the own ways of telling what, being personal, ends up presenting you as collective in the case of exiles and migrants."

The director of Páginas de Espuma, Juan Casamayor, highlighted that the presence on the jury of figures such as Javier Gomá, Estrella de Diego or Espido Freire "underlines the quality of the award."

For Casamayor, "it is good" that, with Lorenzano winning it, this year the award "travels", which "has always had an international vocation", and which for the fourth time falls "on the other side", after being awarded to Ignacio Padilla, Blas Matamoro and the Peruvian Fernando Iwasaki.

According to the editor, Lorenzano "suffered exile at the age of 16, in the Videla dictatorship, and returned to Mexico," and in his work, there are "symbolic, imaginary and geographical shores" and "a permanent state of foreignness in the world."

He estimated that the winner "is a recognized poet in Spain, has a deep career as an essayist in Mexico, and is also a novelist," in addition to being a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

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The winning work "commits to a hybrid, mixed and open essay concept, in which the argumentative line goes hand in hand with the space and the poetic and literary vocation of the author," according to Casamayor.

The editor announced that the work will be published in Spain on March 13 and will also have editions in Argentina and Mexico, with which this award "takes another step in its visibility."