The Plenary of the RAE has awarded the Royal Spanish Academy Award for literary creation, in its nineteenth edition, to the work of the writer and journalist Olga Merino ‘La outsider’, whose candidacy was presented by the academics Mario Vargas Llosa, José María Merino and Carmen Rivera.
The prize, endowed with 20,000 euros, is awarded to a work of literary creation that must have been published in the two years immediately prior to the award, and it is not allowed to present previously published works even if the new edition is corrected and enlarged.
‘La forastera’ has been published by the Alfaguara publishing house and tells the story of Angie, whose existence takes place in an old family mansion, with the memory of the love lived with an English artist in Margaret Thatcher’s London and with the ghosts that haunt her. An event in the region will make the protagonist have to unearth old family secrets from her.
Olga Merino (Barcelona, 1965), has also published titles such as ‘Cenizas Rojas’, in Ediciones B, and ‘Espuelas de papel’, and ‘Perros que ladran en el basement’ in Alfaguara. In 2006 she was recognized with the Vargas Llosa NH Prize for short stories for the story ‘The rules are the rules’. The writer She is a daily contributor to EL PERIÓDICO, where she publishes a diary on current affairs and literature -‘the spiral of the notebook’- which emulates her latest book, ‘Cinco Inviernos’, inspired by his experience as a correspondent for this newspaper in Moscow.
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In addition, the writer has a weekly section called ‘Hotel Cadogan’, where she recreates the atmosphere of a Victorian hotel with its characters and ghosts as the common thread to develop your book reviews or acknowledgments to literary characters and authors.
Of the eleven candidatures —each endorsed by a minimum of three permanent academics from the RAE or from any of its corresponding academies, as well as by one of the winners of previous calls—, four came from Spain, six from American corporations (those from Chile, Peru, Mexico and Ecuador) and one of the previous winners of the award.