Daína Chaviano Receives Important Award for Children's and Young Adult Literature

August 7, 2022

Cuban writer residing in the U.S., Daína Chaviano, received one of the most important awards in the world of children's and young adult literature.

The award was given by Banco del Libro, a recognized organization founded in 1960 based in Caracas, Venezuela, which annually recognizes the best books in children's and young adult literature.

Daína Chaviano won the award in the Young Adult category for her book "País de dragones" (Country of Dragons), a collection of stories that won the National Prize for Children's and Young Adult Literature "La Edad de Oro" in 1989 in Cuba.

At that time the writer still lived on the island, but according to what she told El Nuevo Herald, Cubans never got to read it "because its publication was banned when I decided to leave the country."

In Venezuela the text was published for the first time in 1997, thanks to the now-defunct Rondalera publishing house.

Later, it was published in Spain by the Espasa Juvenil imprint and now the Norma Colombia publishing house has rescued it as part of its Fuera de Serie collection.

According to what Chaviano told the Herald, "I received news of the nomination through a message left by Fanuel Hanán, the book's editor. Although I was very happy, I thought that would be the end of it. It was also the editor who called me to tell me: We won! All I could think to ask him was: Are you sure?"

The book's editor, for his part, assured that "the fact that the book was selected and nominated was great news, but that it won has been an extraordinary recognition."

Finally, the Cuban writer concluded to the American news outlet that the book "was born from the desire to rescue or preserve values that we sometimes forget or relegate to the background: creativity as a source of transformation, the certainty that love and pain are part of human history, the value of diversity. I wanted to expose them in an indirect way, through stories that would carry the breath of ancient fables and medieval legends."

Daína Chaviano won in 2020 the award for best book in Spanish at the Florida Books Awards for her novel "Los hijos de la diosa Huracán" (The Children of the Hurricane Goddess). Additionally, she obtained the Gold Medal for Best Book in Spanish Language at the 14th edition of the literary awards instituted by Florida State University.

Chaviano won this award given by the institution of higher learning in that state in the only one of the 11 categories dedicated to books written in the Spanish language.