This week, the organizing institution of the Book Fair, Fundación El Book (FEL), announced the results of the literary contest that aims to reward unpublished stories volumes written in Spanish: the first prize was won by the Cordoba writer Sebastián Menegaz (Icho Cruz, 1981), by SNARK crew. RECIBERA five million pesos. The awards ceremony will be this afternoon, at 19, in the Domingo Faustino Sarmiento room.
It is the Seventh edition of the Fel Contest to discover and consecrate storytellers; The jury was made up of the writers Alejandra Kamiya and the Colombian Margarita García Robayo and the writer Juan José Becerra. The call presented more than five hundred works in twenty -four countries (in 2024, they had competed 435 from fifteen countries).
The second prize went to The flower is not innocentof Noemí Solimando, which will receive $ 1,400,000, and the third, to Arborby Jorgelina Palavecino, which will take $ 900,000.
Menegaz is a writer, critic and filmmaker, and collaborates in magazines such as Another part, The dilentant y Hurlingham Post. Published the story book The transparent showwinner of the province of Córdoba of Literature, and the novels The Harapient Leagueawarded in 2019 with the second prize of the National Fund of Arts, and The last Moscow. On its volume of unpublished stories, the jury said: “Advance with a solid, safe writing. So much that it is allowed to disguise themselves as a translation and make all kinds of games to create its own universe”.
“The plot of The Harapient League (2022) revolves around a lieutenant of Chacho Peñaloza who forms a gang to avenge it; It is a novel that Luis Chitarroni liked, whom I miss a lot said by the way, and with whom he talked about books, authors, a permanent consultation, except exceptions always by mail, due to the distance -says Menegaz to the nation. He wrote the background of that novel. The other has just left last month, The last Moscowand has as its axis the taking of a pre -University College in 1999, and conjuring or transfigures, rather, school life, student policy and adolescence in the nineties. Martín Kohan a couple of weeks ago put them in relation to both in a column for the blog of eternal cadence. ”
On the award -winning book, which will arouse the interest of local editors, he advances: “’Snark’s crew’ is a long story that takes Jack London something he says in The snark cruiseregarding the number of letters of applicants to enroll in the crew of their sailboat that they write to him when he announces that he plans to go around the world, ”says the author. London transcribes one, two lines of some of those letters, And what the story does is imagine them and continue them, imagine the life and circumstances of those people who write to him from different areas or traditions of literature, and also of the cinema, of the United States, that I read and I saw in my adolescence and in youth. I would say: of the translations of that tradition. Another story imagines, and this plays with the idea of Ricardo Piglia, Che Guevara trying to read in the jungle, in Bolivia. The book has two more stories that respond to variants of the same search. It occurs to me that one of the epigraphs of the book, by Mario Levrero, synthesizes the spirit, a little playful, of the book: ‘Hallucinogenic fungi. That is what, as I read recently, is generated in the old books […] Apparently, one breathes near the books, and travels’ ”.
The author of The flower is not innocent, Noemí solimandohe was born in 1948 and lives in the city of Buenos Aires. She is a lawyer graduated from the University of Buenos Aires and also studied at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the UBA. He published the books Of sounds and other magic y Erotic stories. “Offers a clear narrative proposal, an efficient mechanism and a concise but deep writing in which there are beauty, darkness and redemption, ”the jury ruled.
Jorgelina Palavecinoauthor of Arborwas born in 1978 in General Madariaga and lives in Quilmes. He began his studies in Letters at the National University of La Plata and studied Language and Literature teachers at the Teacher Training Institute No. 50 of Berazategui. He published the works The quarantine, The name of the days y Black Soles. He currently coordinates writing workshops. “It is a deep voices book. And in each one there is a revelation and a mystery about that intimate darkness called ‘inner world’, ”described the jury.
In the previous editions, they won the Fel Jugglars of the boardby Mexican Daniel Salinas Basave; Snowof Máximo Chehin; The inner music of the lions, of Martín Cristal; Irreparableby Emiliano Pérez Garay; Geography and Historyby the Spanish Elena Alonso Frayle, and Creature (Odelia), by Nuria Bado, winner in 2024 and presented this Thursday, at 17.30, in the Sarmiento Sala. With the Prize for Menegaz, the province of Córdoba and the City of Buenos Aires tie 2 to 2 in the top positions.
