Cuba in Three Novels

Born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, journalist Karina Sainz Borgo has written two nonfiction books, Tráfico y Guaire, and Caracas Hip-Hop. In It Would be Night in Caracas (Harper Collins), her first work of fiction, Sainz, for the past 10 years a resident of Spain, chronicles one woman’s struggle to survive amid the dangerous, sometimes deadly, turbulence of daily life in modern Venezuela. After burying her mother, her only family, Adelaida Falcon faces alone a country that has disintegrated into violence and anarchy, where citizens are increasingly pitted against each other. It Would Be Night in Caracas, translated from Spanish by Elizabeth Bryer, is a chilling reminder of how quickly the world we know can crumble.   (Caracas, Venezuela, 1982) Periodista y narradora residente en España. Ha publicado los libros de periodismo Caracas hip-hop y Tráfico y Guaire. El país de los intelectuales. Llega a Miami para presentar su novela debut: La hija de la española, publicada por Lumen, donde cuenta la historia de una periodista que recién ha perdido a su madre y que no logra avanzar en su profesión porque el país donde vive, Venezuela, no se lo permite.

Pablo Medina is the author of eighteen books of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and translation, among them The Island Kingdom; the novels Cubop City Blues and The Cigar Roller, and the newest English version of Alejo Carpentier's seminal novel The Kingdom of This World. He was a member of the AWP board of directors from 2002-2007, serving as president in 2005–2006. Winner of numerous awards, among them grants from the Rockefeller and Oscar B. Cintas foundations, Medina was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2012. He teaches at the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. NBC News calls his latest novel, The Cuban Comedy (The Unnamed Press), "A literary triumph." A love story steeped in political satire, poetry, and the lightest touches of magical realism, Medina has created a bold, funny narrative with an uncanny heroine at its core: Elena of Piedra Negra, Cuba. Piedra Negra is an isolated village, whose citizens consist mainly of soldiers injured in the revolution who pass the time drinking a firewater so intense, all hallucinate, and most never recover. The firewater distiller's daughter Elena longs to be a poet. When Elena wins a national poetry prize, she leaves Piedra Negra behind for Havana. There she encounters a population adjusting to a new way of life, post-revolution: there are spies and secret meetings, black marketeers, and censorship. Full of outlandish humor and insights into an often contradictory and kafkaesque regime, Medina brings 1960s Cuba to life through the eyes of Elena.

Wendy Guerra is a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres and was selected for Bogotá 39, the prestigious group of writers from the Hay Bogotá project. In 2015 and 2016, she was a visiting professor at Princeton and UCLA. From an early age, she found success as a poet, publishing her first volume of poetry aged 17 whilst attending the University of Havana. She later pursued studies in filmmaking and hosted a number of TV shows about culture and television on the national Cuban broadcaster. She began to circulate and publish her texts abroad, to great critical acclaim. As a result of this success, she has been considered with suspicion by Cuban intelligence services and has remained largely unpublished in her native country. Revolution Sunday (Melville House) is a novel of glamour, surveillance, and corruption in contemporary Cuba, from an internationally bestselling author--who has never before been translated into English. Cleo, scion of a once-prominent Cuban family and a promising young writer in her own right, travels to Spain to collect a prestigious award. There, Cuban expats view her with suspicion--assuming she's an informant for the Castro regime. To Cleo's surprise, that suspicion follows her home to Cuba, where she finds herself under constant surveillance by the government. When she meets and falls in love with a Hollywood filmmaker, she discovers her family is not who she thought they were . . . and neither is the filmmaker. Ploughshares writes that Revolution Sunday is a “riveting, poetic, fever dream of a novel.”   (La Habana, Cuba, 1970) Narradora y poeta cubana residente en la isla. Graduada de Dirección de Cine en el Instituto Superior de Arte. Ha publicado las novelas Todos se van (2006), Nunca fui primera dama (2008), Posar desnuda en La Habana (2011), Negra (2013) y Domingo de Revolución ( 2016), y los libros de poesía Platea a oscuras, Cabeza rapada y Ropa interior (2009). Ganadora del Premio Bruguera 2006 y del Carbet des Lycéens 2009. Llega a la feria de la mano de Penguin Random House con Historia de un mercenario que coleccionaba obras de arte, novela donde se cuenta la historia de un hombre sin escrúpulos que ofrece sus servicios militares al mejor postor y también participa en la presentación del libro Isla en la luz, publicado por tra.publishing.