Alberto Guerra Naranjo

Alberto Guerra holds a degree in History and Social Sciences, cultivates criticism and essays, is a film screenwriter and one of the most important Cuban narrators of the present time.

His stories, characterized by a refined style not lacking in humor, show a range of situations that range from love, heartbreak and sex, to violence and doubts. A confessed enemy of ruthless commercialization, of art plagued with concessions, he demands rigor of himself.

In his work, Cuban reality of the 90s acts as the main character. In 1999 he offered readings of his texts in the cities of Munich, Weimar and Berlin, alongside writer Miguel Barnet. In 1999 he was awarded a three-month scholarship by DAAD Berlin. He participated in the International Book Fair in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1997 and 2002 and in Bogotá in 2001. In May 2000 he was invited to Spain by Casa de las Américas to present the anthology Nuevos Narradores Cubanos (Siruela publishing, 2000). He has given readings and lectures in Cuba, Mexico, Germany, Spain, Colombia, and Argentina.

Biographical Data
Professor of History of Ancient Culture at the University Branch of Isla de la Juventud, in 1984.
Professor of postgraduate courses on History of Cuban Culture at the Provincial Training Center of Ciudad de La Habana of the Ministry of Culture, between 1993 and 1995.
Director of Literary Workshops at the National Center for Culture of Cuba, between 1995 and 1997.
DAAD Berlin scholarship recipient, in 1999.
Promotional tour through the cities of Weimar, Munich and Berlin with writer Miguel Barnet, in 2000.
Presentations of his own work at Casa de América, in Madrid, in 2001.
Lectures at book fairs in Guadalajara (1997 and 2002), Bogotá (2001), El Zócalo (2006).
Member of the Latin American Project Entresures, through which he visited the city of Buenos Aires, in 2006 and wrote his short story Bos taurus.
Presentation of the Latin American Project Entresures and of the book "No es una antología. Paisaje real de una ficción vivida" (Estruendomudo publishing, Peru) on May 19, 2007 at Casa refugio Citlaltépetl, sponsored by the Ford Foundation and the Príncipe Clauss Foundation.
From May 24 to June 9 he was invited by the University of Chihuahua to give lectures, present his book Blasfemia del escriba, and to teach a Literary Creation Workshop at the Centro Cultural Quinta Gameros.
He participated in the book fair in Chile in 2007 and Argentina in 2008
He is the author of the novel La soledad del tiempo (Unión, 2009)
For eight years he has directed a Literary Creation Workshop by email and works as an advisor to Cuban television.

Works
He has published the story collections Disparos en el aula, Editorial Extramuros, La Habana, (1994),
Aporías de la feria, Editorial Extramuros, (1996) and
Blasfemia del escriba, Editorial Letras Cubanas, (2000 and 2002).

His stories appear published in national and foreign magazines, among which stand out Casa de las Américas, Luvina and Viceversa, from Mexico, Grand Street, from the United States and have been included, among others, in the anthologies Aire de Luz (Cuban stories of the twentieth century), Letras Cubanas; Nuevos Narradores Cubanos, Siruela; Bersi la Morte, Baldini Castoldi, Italy; Cubanísimos, Germany, Surkhamp; Des Nouvelles de Cuba, Metalié suites, France; Armoa Auringon alla, Like, Finland.

He appears published in the anthology Cuentos históricos, de la piedra al átomo, Páginas de Espuma, 2003, alongside writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, Juan Rulfo, Augusto Roa Bastos, Manuel Mujica Láinez, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Alfonso Sastre, José Emilio Pacheco and others. Corazón partido bajo otra circunstancia, Pequeñas maniobras and Disparos en el aula were filmed for television. He has unpublished his novel "Cristal o La soledad del tiempo."

Awards and Distinctions
"Luis Rogelio Nogueras" Prize, 1992
City Prize, 1994
Second Prize in "Love Stories" from Las Tunas, 1996
Los heraldos negros, Prize from La Gaceta de Cuba, 1997
La Gaceta de Cuba Prize, 1999
"Ernest Hemingway" Prize, 1998
"Razón de Ser" Prize, 1999
Second International Prize for Short Stories on Disability, in Valladolid, Spain, 2017
José Nogales International Prize for Short Stories with his work "The Silent Film Pianist", 2018

Guerra Naranjo is considered an irreverent writer. Recently he has obtained the prestigious José Nogales International Prize for Short Stories with his work "El pianista del cine mudo", a story written four or five years ago and only ten pages long, and he also obtained last December the Second International Prize for Short Stories on Disability, in Valladolid, Spain.

Looking into the distance, thank goodness there's another day ahead, the writer says, I'm already almost grateful to that jury of the Alejo Carpentier National Prize for Stories, for declaring the prize vacant. Had something like that not happened I would not have sought literary alternatives. The adversaries have the audacity to confess that it's nothing, that those are regional competitions, that I kicked up too much of a fuss for not feeling resonance in our press while world agencies were spreading that news, that I just got lucky. But my friends congratulate me and take these prizes as their own. That is what is important.

I must attend Huelva, where they will present me with the José Nogales International Prize for Stories and I will be worthy of a Cuban writer who is a defender of his roots and his historical challenges, of that you can be sure. With me will travel, as always, the memories of my great-grandfather, Colonel of the Liberation Army, Tiburcio Naranjo and those of my father, Cándido Guerra Guerra, an eastern farmer who rose up in time in the Sierra Maestra.

I prefer that things have happened this way, first the vacant Carpentier prize as an incentive and then the international prizes from Valladolid and Huelva, just as the events occurred that I can no longer undo. Although I detest competitions, nothing prevents me from being surprised and winning the Carpentier, in short stories or in novels, in some of these coming years. I have always been a writer, Cuban to the core and far too optimistic.