"Thank you for not forgetting him. You make him live every year," said Solángel Uña, Guillermo Vidal's widow, at the closing of the national narrative day named after this writer, who revolutionized the Cuban narrative of the 20th century.
Las Tunas, Cuba.- Gathered in Maceo Park, local writers, and artists said goodbye to this event, which from February 8 to 10 paid tribute to the author of “Confabulación de la araña” through theoretical panels, book presentations, text readings, and other initiatives.
Odalys Leyva Rosabal and Luis Mariano Estrada Segura ("Lewis") conducted the space and dedicated allegorical verses such as the one signed by the latter writer: "Today ends the day/ literary and Don Guillermo/ came out of his barren state/ and became a pillow/ Matarile was a cascade/ of letters, lights and bread/ to flood the narrative couch/ its crucibles/ Guillermo were Five suns/ for all those who are there."
Marina Lourdes Jacobo, president of the Provincial Committee of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (Uneac in Spanish), gave a bouquet of roses to Guille’s love. Also offered their art to the concertmaster Elvira Skourtis and her guitar quartet Sultasto, as well as the trombone quartet Melodía.
As a climax, Havana-born Maykel Rafael Paneque announced the winner of the Guillermo Vidal National Narrative Contest, which this time went to the book of short stories “Un fin tan próximo."
The jury made up of María Liliana Celorrio, Yunier Riquenes, and Manuel García Verdecia, after analyzing the 11 works in competition, decided to award the prize "for the selection of plots that delve into the characteristics of human nature such as sexual morbidity, violence, confrontations of interests, envy, but with a touch of envy, envy, but with an insight that saves them from the routine, elaborated with a structure that highlights the proper structuring of conflicts, the use of effective language, the play with characters that are often reiterated throughout the book, as well as a skillful handling of changes in the narrative point of view."
