María Elena Llana Castro

Narrator, journalist, radio and TV screenwriter, journalism professor and radio techniques professor. Considered one of the most important contemporary Cuban short story writers. Her second book Casas del Vedado received the National Critics Prize in 1984. Her work has been included in anthologies inside and outside Cuba, and translated into several languages.

María Elena began writing fiction as a very small child, she felt the need to express herself. This led her to write her first story at age 12.

Before turning four years old, her family moved to La Habana where, after completing elementary school, she pursued incomplete studies in plastic arts at the Escuela San Alejandro. In 1958 she graduated as a journalist from the Escuela Profesional de Periodismo Manuel Márquez Sterling.

From 1959 until 1992 she worked in newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and at the Prensa Latina News Agency.

During those years she was a copy editor, headline writer, reporter, chronicler, theater, radio, television, plastic arts and literature critic, as well as a specialist in international politics topics.

In 1959 she began working at the newspaper Revolución; but quickly moved to the daily La Tarde until beginning at Prensa Latina in the second half of the 1960s. She also collaborated on the pages of the newspapers La Calle and Palante and did reports for the magazines Pueblo y Cultura, and Cuba. She did reports for Pueblo y Cultura, Cuba and the newscasts of Radio Reloj and CMQ-TV.

She was part of the Latin American Department of the Prensa Latina News Agency. She was a journalism professor in Angola in 1987, and correspondent for the Prensa Latina Agency in Beijing between 1989 and 1992.

She was chief editor of the magazine Prisma Internacional (1978-79). Associate Director of Cuba internacional (1979-82). Chief editor of the cultural editing service of Prensa Latina (1983-85). Chief editor of the Asia articles section at Prensa Latina (1988-89). Chief correspondent of Prensa Latina in the People's Republic of China (1989-1992). Special envoy to cultural gatherings in countries of the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa in the 1970s and 1980s.

She published her first book in 1965.

She has visited Spain, Mexico and the United States.

She also has collaborations in Revista del Granma, Palante. She worked as a writer at the Instituto Cubano de Radiodifusión, using the pseudonym Mariel.

I feel fortunate to have earned my salary doing things I have liked: journalism and literature.

The latest book by María Elena Llana. En el Limbo (Letras Cubanas, 2009) is the title of the volume that brings together short stories in which irony, humor, suspicion, reflective will and the author's deep culture compose a perfect blend for the alchemy of good literature.

Radio and Television
She worked as a journalist in the CMQ-TV Newscast and on Radio Reloj. Subsequently she moved, as a writer, to the Direction of Dramatized Programs, where she has worked until the present, under contract.

Although she has written for television stories, theater and children's programs, as well as special dramatized programs on political themes, her greatest achievement has been in national radio. In this medium, she has focused her work fundamentally on the adaptation of masterpieces of universal narrative, both short stories and novels.

Her most recent title broadcast by the national station "Radio Progreso" is "Sueño de las Mansiones Rojas", a classic of Chinese literature, the first work of this type to be disseminated through a mass medium in Cuba.

She has given lectures on the value of radio as a vehicle for disseminating culture at sector gatherings, both in Cuba and in Mexico, and is preparing a book on Radio Script Technique, based on her experience and teaching work.

Teaching
Journalism and Spanish advisor in Hanói, People's Republic of Vietnam, (1982-83).
Journalism professor in Luanda, People's Republic of Angola, (1987-88).
Journalism and Literature professor at "Universidad de Las Américas", and at "Universidad del Mayab", in Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico, (1994 – 96). Facilitator of a literary workshop organized by the publishing company "Unas Letras", as part of the "Otoño Cultural" festival, Mérida, Yucatán, 2008.
Radio techniques professor. Training Department of the Instituto Cubano de Radio y Televisión (ICRT), since 1996.

Literature
Her first story was a small humorous text that she published in El Pitirre, a supplement that was published alongside Lunes de Revolución.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s she wrote the stories that would make up La reja, her first collection of stories, which appeared in 1965, published by Ediciones Revolución. It includes "Nosotras", one of her most anthologized texts and which is studied at the U.S. universities of Santa Bárbara and San Diego.

In that first book is also included "Nochemala", a text that essayist Zaida Capote highlights within the story production of the sixties: The story, truly moving and with admirable narrative audacity, offers an unusual vision of the struggle prior to 1959.

Regarding this, her first collection, essayist and critic Alberto Garrandés has opined: "La reja" represented not only a reverence to literature that explores the limits of the real, but also supplied readers with (…) the cartography of a very deliberate aesthetic and with which Llana has maintained a creative commitment whose structure remains intact to this day, regardless of its mutations.

In 1978 she had an unexpected foray into poetry, with a collection that received honorable mention in the Concurso Julián del Casal of the UNEAC, and which remains unpublished to this day.

Almost twenty years had to pass for the publication of her second short story collection, Casas del Vedado, which saw the light in 1983. This book obtains one of the Literary Critics Prizes and is recognized by scholars of Cuban literature as one of the emblematic texts of that period and which, as other authors had not done before, reflects from its fantastic side the universe of the remnants of the petty bourgeoisie that had remained in Cuba.

Despite the success of Casas del Vedado, many more years had to pass for the release of her third collection. In 1998 she introduces Castillo de naipes. A book in which the fantastic and the non-realistic in general predominate, as well as the poeticization of the human being's need to overcome its own limits and go beyond its logical-conventional constraints. The stories gathered here explore the most diverse corners of the human psyche, the aesthetic possibilities of unconscious processes.

In this regard, critic Pedro Pérez Rivero noted: I observe in these texts many signs of Llana in her two previous books: the coexistence, natural and assumed, between the living and the dead; the humor that points toward the extreme of a smile, not toward a laugh.

In 2011 she publishes her first children's book: Sueños, sustos y sorpresas, which is followed in 2014 by the novel Desde Marte hasta el parque. Regarding her writing for children and young people, and the character of Aunt Cuca, the protagonist in both books, she would confess in an interview:

The idea of addressing the genre arose in a life review, a cleaning of my personal files. I set out to throw away everything I had saved "to write someday", because I told myself that I no longer have time for so much. But when I opened the children's file, it seemed to me that this story was good and this other one too. I ended up freeing them from the auto-da-fé. I kept them, rethought each anecdote and Cuca emerged.

She has participated in literary events in the United States, Spain, Italy, Mexico, Panama, Chile and Russia.

Published Books
Short Story
La reja, Ediciones Revolución, Cuba, 1965
Casas del Vedado, Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1983
Castillos de naipes, Ediciones UNIÓN, Cuba, 1998
Ronda en el Malecón, Ediciones UNIÓN, Cuba, 2004
Apenas murmullos, Editorial Letras Cubanas, 2004
Casi todo, Anthology, Ediciones UNIÓN, Cuba, 2007
En el Limbo, Editorial Letras Cubanas, 2009
Tras la quinta puerta, Ediciones UNIÓN, Cuba, 2014
El cristal con que se mira, Ediciones La Luz, Cuba, 2016
Children's Literature
Sueños, sustos y sorpresas, Editorial Gente Nueva, 2011.
Desde Marte hasta el parque, Editorial Gente Nueva, 2014.
Published in Anthologies
In Cuba:

1967: "The two of us (Nosotras)". Cuban short stories 1959 – 66 (also in French and Spanish), Editorial José Martí.
1968: "Nosotras". Cuban tales of the fantastic and extraordinary, Ediciones Unión.
1987: "El gobelino". Tell fifteen years. Editorial Gente Nueva.
1994: "The Baccarat Punch Bowl (De Baccarat)". Twenty Century Cuban Short Stories, Editorial José Martí.
1996: "Nosotras". Statues of salt, Ediciones Unión.
1999: "El gobelino". Light air, twentieth century Cuban stories, Editorial Letras Cubanas.
"Un abanico chino". Words of foam, Editorial Oriente.
2003: "En familia". Hispano-American fantastic tales, Editorial Casa de las Américas.
"Ronda en el malecón". Disquieting muses, Ediciones Unión.
2004: "Redford Jr". My sacred family, Editorial Oriente.
2005: "Añejo cinco siglos". Conversation with the white buffalo, Editorial Letras Cubanas.
2008: "Cuestión de tiempos". The fabulating island, the Cuban short story in the Revolution, Editorial Letras Cubanas.
"La Reja". Spaces on the Island, 50 years of women's short stories in Cuba, Ediciones Unión.
2009: "Raíces de humo". Between the pores and the stars, Editorial Abril.

With writers Agustín López, Basilia Papastamatíu, Félix Sánchez, Lázaro Zamora, Edel Morales and Roberto Manzano.
In Other Countries:

1973: "Nosotras". Fear in Spanish, Ed. Samo, Mexico.
1975: "Nos (Nosotras)". Cuban tales of the marvelous and the fantastic, Ed. Edicoes 70. Portugal.
1989: "El gobelino". Contemporary Cuban stories, Ed. Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico.
1993: "El gobelino". The Yellow Submarine. Ed. Cultural Dissemination of the UNAM, Mexico.
1998: "En familia". Cuban stories. Ed. Popular, Spain.
"Japanese daisies (Margaritas japonesas)". Cubana, contemporary fiction by Cuban women. Ed. Beacon Press, USA.
2000: "Mariposas de noviembre". Habaneras, ten Cuban women narrators. Ed. Txlaparta, Basque Country, Spain.
"Mariposas de noviembre". Contemporary Cuban women storytellers. Ed. Library of university texts. Salta, Argentina.
2001: "Los cuartos". Cuban women storytellers today. Ed. Instituto movilizador de fondos cooperativos, Argentina.
2002: El gobelino. Roads of Eve. Ed. Plaza Mayor. Puerto Rico.
2003: "Alondra pasa". Cuban women writers: Memory bewitched, Ed. Icaria, Barcelona, Spain.
2004: "Eleggua spray". Making a Scene Cuban women stories, Ed. Mango Publising, England.
2005: "Ritorno (Volver)". With Havana in the heart, Ed. Marco Tropea Editore, Italy.
2006: "Una alumna obediente". Unpunished stories, Ed. Popular, Spain.
2007: "The rooms (Los cuartos)" and "A five hundred years old rum (Añejo cinco siglos)". Cuba on the edge, Ed. Critical Culture and Communication Press, England.
"Añejo cinco siglos". From Havana it has arrived... , Ed. Popular, Spain.
"En la orilla". Stories with the aroma of tobacco, Ed. Popular, Spain.

Awards
She was a winner of several national awards from the Unión de Periodistas de Cuba (UPEC).
1980: Report (Soviet-Cuban space trip, in Cuba Internacional).
1983: Interview, ("Lam once again", Cuba Internacional), work that was later included in Wilfredo Lam, the harvest of a sorcerer, a compilation of texts about the painter, carried out by the Instituto Wifredo Lam and published by Editorial Letras Cubanas).
1984: Chronicle, ("A memory for the poet", referring to García Lorca, Prensa Latina).
At the Librería Fayad Jamís.
1984: Critics Prize for Casas del Vedado.
2023: National Literature Prize

Radio and TV Awards
Among the recognitions received in this sector, are:
1977: Two first prizes at the I National Radio Festival, for the original theater "La rueda rueda" and the cultural "Domingo Una y Treinta", (script, advisory and direction), broadcast by Radio Progreso, (RP).
1978: Honorable mention for "Domingo Una y Treinta". (RP).
1997: UNEAC Caracol Prize for the radiodrama "El canto inconcluso", about the life and work of Ernesto Che Guevara, (RP).
2000: First Prize for radio script from the "International Father Jerónimo Usera Foundation Contest", a Catholic institution based in Madrid and linked in Cuba to the office of the City Historian.
2006: Honorable mention for the special work "The people and history", to celebrate the anniversary of the Revolution, (RP).
2008: Honorable mention for the novel "Sueño de las Mansiones Rojas", adaptation of a classic Chinese work.

Other Recognitions Received
Raúl Gómez García Distinction from the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Cultura (SNTC).
Félix Elmuza Distinction from the Unión de Periodistas de Cuba (UPEC).
Medal of International Worker awarded by the Council of State.
Distinction for National Culture, from the Ministry of Culture of Cuba.