On Monday, December 12, the Bunge y Born Foundation, Fundación Proa and La Nación jointly announced the winning projects of the “All Times” Writing Encouragement Award. The ceremony, which culminated a three-month selection process, took place in the Fundación Proa Auditorium, in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of La Boca.
There, Maragato filmmaker Marcos Montes de Oca was highlighted, in the Script category, for his project “Falta!”.
The contest, organized for the third consecutive year, aims to support young authors from all over the country, in the process of creating their works of various genres. It has five proposed categories: Narrative, Brief Narrative, Script, Dramaturgy and Graphic Narrative.
The Jury, made up of renowned writers María Sonia Cristoff, Mercedes Halfon, Héctor Guyot and Daniel Link, selected a winning project in each category. The winners received 350,000 pesos as an incentive to continue developing their work.
It is a selection in which hybrid texts that are located on the border between different genres or move them to unsuspected places prevailed, works that venture into themes, topographies and times little explored and that stand out for the originality of the voice or the poetic power of his images.
The Jury also distinguished between three and five projects per category with honorable mentions that give their authors the chance to participate in writing clinics with Alan Pauls and Romina Paula.
In Graphic Narrative, in order to support the publication by an independent publisher, the organizers awarded the winning work an Incentive for Publishing of 250,000 pesos.
“The creation process is often long and lonely. By granting support before the work is finished, we seek to provide recognition and a boost at a time when it can be particularly valuable for the authors”, said Adriana Rosenberg, director of Fundación Proa.
“Throughout these three years of the Award, we have received more than 3,500 projects, coming from all jurisdictions in the country. Among the winners, there are authors from Río Negro, Córdoba, Mendoza, Santa Fe, Neuquén and the province of Buenos Aires, among others. It is an indicator of the good state of health enjoyed by the arts of writing in Argentina”, said Iván Petrella, Director of Culture and Heritage of the Bunge y Born Foundation.
For his part, Norberto Frigerio, Director of Institutional Relations of La Nación, announced that in mid-2023 the three organizing entities will open the call for the fourth edition of the Award.
Winners:
Narrative:
➢ The mermaid Indian, Gabriela Larralde (CABA, 1985).
She is a writer, screenwriter and university professor. She published the novel Life Now (Planet); the children’s book Bestiario secreto de niñas malas (Planeta Junior) which was translated into Basque, and soon into Catalan; the investigations Diversity and gender at school (Paidós); The possible worlds (Title, Blatt & Ríos); and three books of poetry. As a screenwriter, among her latest works are: the Monzón series (Netflix, 2019); the children’s animated series Petit (PakaPaka, two-time Emmy Kids Award nominee; and Prix Jeunesse nominee). In 2018 she received the Creation Scholarship and in 2020 an honorable mention for her storybook El Plan, from the National Endowment for the Arts.
“Larralde’s work is a kind of historical novel from a fictional past, where real events coexist with elements that are products of the imagination. A mythical quality. The action takes place in the early years of the Conquest and is unleashed when a Spanish expedition in the waters of the Río de la Plata discovers an Indian mermaid, an aquatic being half fish and half indigenous woman. It is told from a polyphony of voices ranging from the admiral of the expedition to Queen Elizabeth in Spain. A very careful and poetic prose that brings to the scene the ways in which we react to otherness, fears and the fascination that the unknown produces”, said Héctor Guyot.
Mentions:
➢ A man looking for a comet, Yamila Bêgné (Buenos Aires Province).
➢ Theory of hedgehogs, Natalia Codina (CABA).
➢ Time is later, Lautaro Lamisovski (CABA).
Script:
➢ The Sánchez brothers, Theo Fernández (CABA, 1998).
He started writing at the age of 5 (composing songs in kindergarten) and hasn’t stopped since. He studied at the Universidad del Cine and is dedicated to writing film scripts to a greater extent. As of today, he has made two short films, “Hoy es jueves” (2019) and “Cortocircuito” (2022), and is producing a third. “Los hermanos Sánchez stands out for its strong aesthetic commitment that parodies traditional genres such as musicals and black series, which Theo Fernández adapts to create a completely challenging narrative platform”, explained Daniel Link.
Mentions:
➢ Repeated figures, Lucas Galambos and Gonzalo Giacometti Komel (CABA).
➢ Foul!, Marcos Montes de Oca (Bariloche, Río Negro).
➢ Those who care, Carmela Sandberg (CABA).
➢ From exile, Lucía Vela (CABA).
Brief Narrative:
➢ Cruza, by Camila Vázquez (1994).
Camila was born in Rosario, grew up in Merlo, San Luis, and lives in Río Cuarto, Córdoba. She is a teacher and has a degree in Language and Literature. She works in secondary schools and teaches literary workshops. She coordinates the Casa de Poesía space. She published the collection of poems Yeguariza (Kintsugi, 2020). She is part of the anthologies Flotar y Campo (Camalote, 2020-2022) and Threat and Wonder (Gog and Magog, 2022) and Argentine Poets: 1981-2000 (Del Dock, unpublished). She received the La Bienal de Arte Joven de Buenos Aires award in the poetry category (2021) and We move the world organized by the CCK in the essay category (2022). She writes for the newspaper La Marea. She is part of the Glauce Baldovin Collective.
“Doing honor to his name, Cruza crosses a series of genres (portrait, autobiography, biography, dream diary, poetry), geographies (the mountain, the puntana, the porteña) and different places of initiation for Argentine literature. She is constantly going through the stress of writing in and from Buenos Aires. Wakefulness and sleep are also intertwined, comechingones and whites, horses and donkeys, which is nothing more than the cross that gives rise to the mule. I like to think of this text as a stubborn and powerful text like a mule”, assured María Sonia Cristoff.
Mentions:
➢ It would not be enough, Abigail Dana (CABA).
➢ Rare girls, Nicolás Ghigonetto (Córdoba, Córdoba).
➢ End of season, Esteban Godoy (CABA).
➢ All things in the world, Francisco Noriega (CABA).
➢ The zoo of plants, Darío Roussilian (CABA).
Dramaturgy:
➢ Three centimeters of infinite cold, Ivana Schiaffino (CABA, 1990).
She is a graduate of the Actor Training course (2014) and the Playwriting Course of the Metropolitan School of Dramatic Art (2020). Her first work as a playwright “Retazos” (2019) premiered in the Kairós method and she was selected to participate in the musical theater seminar at the Young Art Biennial (2019). In 2021, she was runner-up in the IV world writing competition with her text “El semental”.
“Ivana Schiaffino’s work captivated us for many reasons. For the power of her poetic voice, of great strength and originality, and for her thematic universe – high-performance sport, more particularly tennis. Through procedures typical of tragedy, this piece brings the story of an unexpected heroine. It is a long monologue by Mónica Seles, who recreates her attack that occurred in 1993. We value this text because it unites dissimilar elements and with them builds its form: poetry and theater, Yugoslavia and Argentina, the nineties and the present.” said Mercedes Halfon.
Mentions:
➢ The cure for cancer, Gabriel Graves (CABA).
➢ Little Allegory, Fanny Ribas (CABA).
➢ Dust in the eyes, Damián Smajo (CABA).
➢ Otumpa, Melisa Stocco (Esquel, Chubut).
Graphic Narrative, incentive to edition:
➢ Flood, Guido Barsi (La Plata, 1986) and Santiago Miret (CABA, 1983).
Guido Barsi published his first comic strip in the Bastión Comix magazine and his first graphic novel Ahogo, together with Leandro Silva for the Córdoba label Llanto de Mudo. In 2017, with the publication of Pipo y Bartolo: ¡Al Rescate !, he co-founded the Pi Ediciones publishing house with Darío Reyes, in which he works as editor and scriptwriter of several works.
Santiago Miret is a draftsman and architect from the University of Buenos Aires. He has published comics and illustrations since 2003 in various media, including Comiqueando, Hotel de las Ideas, Anexia Ediciones, Fierro Magazine, Revílver Magazine and the El Cholo strip for ten years in the Varela al Día newspaper, among others.
“There were works of extraordinary quality. We decided to privilege the works that best suited the category. Flood, takes up the classic forms of the graphic novel with powerful illustrations, suggestive illustrations and precise dialogue, ”explained Daniel Link.
Finalists in this category:
➢The escapees, Melina Agostini (CABA).
➢Casa Yapeyú, Juan Manuel Pachué and Marco Zampieron (Rosario, Santa Fe).
➢100 ridiculous fears, Guadalupe Sendra (CABA).
➢Good fortune, Lourdes Velásquez (Buenos Aires Province).