This week Mujeres, a weekly women’s journal, featured prolific Cuban writer Dora Alonso, who died on March 21, 2001 at the age of 90. Various Cuban cultural institutes are already planning the festivities for the centennial of her birth, to be celebrated in 2010.
Born in Matanzas on December 22, 1910, Alonso is best known for her literature for children and young readers. These works, some of which are still read in the elementary school curriculum, include La flauta de chocolate, Teatro para niños, Tres lechuzas en un cuento, El cochero azul, El valle de la Pájara Pinta and Once caballos. However, she was always a multifaceted writer; as a journalist, she served as a war correspondent for Bohemia during the Cuban Revolution, but she also wrote about many topics— sports, union struggles, and memories of Cuba’s past. Alonso went on to write radio and television scripts, poetry, short stories, and novels, for which she won national and international literary prizes.
For full article (in Spanish), see http://www.mujeres.cubaweb.cu/articulo.asp?a=2009&num=429&art=38
For an interview with Dora Alonso (in English), see http://www.cubanow.net/pages/loader.php?sec=7&t=2&item=662
