Escritor dominicano José Acosta gana prestigioso Premio Casa de las Américas 2015

Escritor dominicano José Acosta gana prestigioso Premio Casa de las Américas 2015
New York, February 6th, 2015

Dominican writer José Acosta won the prestigious Casa de las Américas Award 2015 in the category of Latin American Literature in the United States, with the novel Un kilómetro de mar.

The members of the jury, made of Aileen El-Kadi, from Brazil, José A. Mazzotti, from Peru, and Margarita Mateo, from Cuba, after having read and discussed the books that were submitted, agreed to present the Casa de las Americas Award to José Acosta’s book for “being an impeccable narrative about the ups and downs of two teenagers in the Dominican Republic in the 60’s, without failing to include a character disenchanted with his life in America, the influence of western comic books in the popular culture and an updated look on the last years of the Trujillo dictatorship, combined in a nimble narrative, with a handling of the language that in numerous occasions becomes poetic.”

Writers from Colombia, Cuba, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Argentina, Chile and Mexico swept the main prizes at the 56th Literary Competition “Casa de las Americas” 2015, as announced by the jury in Havana.

Since its inception in 1959, the competition that is convened by the Cuban cultural institution “Casa de las Americas”, has gathered thousands of works written by authors from across the Hemisphere, and more than one hundred have received the Award, according to data provided by its promoters.

The Artepoetica Press publishing company, based in New York, in 2014 published Un kilómetro de mar, the new novel by the award-winning Dominican writer José Acosta, which has been released throughout all the countries where the Spanish language is spoken. “Un kilómetro de mar is a story of self-discovery and imagination, told in a vibrant and exciting tone,” said Colombian writer and teacher Carlos Aguasaco, the book editor. “José Acosta is a Dominican writer who resides in New York and who represents the best of Caribbean literature,” he added.

The novel can be purchased through http://www.artepoetica.com or www.amazon.com.

The Dominican Commissioner of Culture in the United States, Mr. Carlos Sánchez, congratulated José Acosta for having received such important award.

“For us, the Dominican Commissioner of Culture, it is a source of pride that one of the members of this institution has won the Casa de las Americas award, one of the most prestigious cultural institutions worldwide,” Sánchez said. “José Acosta has earned a place in the world of literature at the international level, in the Poetry, Short Story and Novel categories, in which he has won major awards,” he said.

He receives the recognition at a time when the Techo de Papel publishing house, based in New York, is publishing the complete works of José Acosta, some of which can now be purchased at Amazon.com, including Catequesis del íncubo, honorable mention Casa de Teatro’s International Poetry Award; El efecto dominó, Universidad Central de Este’s National Short Story Award ; El enigma del anticuario, stories; Destrucciones, New Yor k’s “Odon Betanzos Palacios” International Poetry Award; Territorios Extraños, the Dominican Republic’s National Poetry Award, and El evangelio según la muerte, Mexico’s “Nicolás Guillén” International Poetry Award.

Un kilómetro de mar tells the story of Juan Robles, a young preteen with extraordinary imagination and courage, who takes advantage of his mother’s absence to accompany his friend Edy Polanco to see the ocean. Overwhelmed since childhood by the psychological trauma of having witnessed the confusing death of his father, and besieged by the thirst for revenge, Juan Robles evades reality and takes shelter in a universe re-created from the western novels.

“The convoluted and exciting journey to the summit of the mountain is, in turn, paradoxically, a descent into himself, a shortcut to adolescence, where Juan Robles, thanks to Don Anselmo’s wisdom, the erotic encounter with the hooker Aurelion, and the advice and fortuitous deal he made with the contradictory and cynical Engineer Chicho Moronta, finally manages to overcome fear and confront face to face the existential monster that haunts him,” said writer Rubén Sánchez Féliz. “With a nimble and clean prose, indisputably beautiful, poetic and full of humor, Acosta manages to reconcile tenderness and violence, in a Santiago de los Caballeros that stands as a character, rescuing the customs of a time that marked the life of an entire generation: the triumvirate and the Balaguer era,” he said.

In turn, and regarding Un kilómetro de mar, writer Osiris Vallejo said: “Teenagers Edy Polanco and Juan Robles, decide on a fine day to venture into the mountains to see if they can get to the sea on the other side and thus begins a journey that will take them beyond the sea, to understanding that each step they take away from the neighborhood in which they were born, leads them to an unknown and unstable world where the only certainty is the absurd.”

José Acosta is a poet, a storyteller and a social communicator. He has won the National Literature Award of the Dominican Republic, the most important in the country, four times. In 1994, his collection of poems Territorios Extraños received the Salomé Ureña National Poetry Award, and in 1997 he won the Odón Betanzos Palacios International Poetry Award in New York with his work Destrucciones. His awards also include an honorable mention at the Fourth International Poetry Competition “La Porte des Poètes”, in Paris (1994); another one at the “José Rafael Pocaterra” Latin American Biennial of Literature, held in Valencia, Venezuela (1998). In 2003, his poetry collection El evangelio según la muerte won the “Nicolás Guillén” International Poetry Award in Mexico; and, that same year, another of his collection of poems was a finalist at the “Miguel de Cervantes” International Poetry Award, in Armilla, Spain.

As a storyteller, he has received numerous awards, including the National Short Story Award, from Universidad Central del Este (2000), for El efecto dominó; the National Novel Award (2005), for Perdidos en Babilonia, and the National Short Story Award (2005), for Los derrotados huyen a París. In 2010, one of his novels was among the 10 finalists at the 15th Fernando Lara Novel Award, of the Planeta publishing company. In 2011, he was a finalist at the Juan Rulfo International Short Story Award, France, and the same year, again, he won the National Novel Award with La multitud.

bootstrap carousel