Mayra Santos-Febres and Luis Molina-Casanova selected as Plenary Speakers

IFLA is pleased to announce that the IFLA WLIC 2011 National Committee has selected Mayra Santos-Febres and Luis Molina-Casanova as Plenary Speakers.

MAYRA SANTOS-FEBRES is a young Puerto Rican writer of poems, essays, stories and novels.  She is also a Professor of Literature at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, and a cultural promoter. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the Universidad de Puerto Rico, a Master in Arts and a Ph.D. from Cornell University.

Santos-Febres is a prolific writer and her work appears in international journals and newspapers such as Casa de las Américas in Cuba; Página doce, Argentina; Revue Noir, France; and Latin American Revue of Arts and Literature, in New York. In 1991 two books of poetry appeared: Anamú and Manigua–selected as one of the 10 best books of the year by several Puerto Rican literary critics–and El orden escapado which won the 1st prize for poetry in the Revista Tríptico in Puerto Rico. In 2000 Trilce published Tercer mundo, her third book of poetry.

As a story writer, Santos Febres has won the Premio Letras de Oro (USA, 1994) for her collection of stories Pez de vidrio, and the Juan Rulfo Award for her book Oso Blanco in 1996,.

In 2000, the Spanish publisher Grijalbo Mondadori published her first novel, Sirena Selena vestida de pena which has been translated to English, Italian and French; it was a finalist for the Romulo Gallegos Award for novels in 2001.  In 2002 Grijalbo Mondadori also published her second novel Cualquier miércoles soy tuya. In April 2005 a collection of essays Sobre piel y papel was published and also a personal anthology Abro mi sangre appeared.
 
She has been invited as visiting professor to several universities and received a number of scholarships for her outstanding work. 

Mayra Santos Febres will speak on Tuesday, 16 August, 08:30 – 09:15.

LUIS MOLINA-CASANOVA is Resident Filmmaker and professor at the Communications Department of the University of the Sacred Heart in San Juan, Puerto Rico. His academic degrees are in Marketing and Architecture, from the University of Puerto Rico and in Communications and Film production from the University of Madri.  He has successfully taken the Puerto Rican experience and its literature into the film industry.  Apart from his more than 30 years of teaching at the University of the Sacred Heart, he has taught courses on filmmaking at the University of Guadalajara, in Mexico, and at Harvard University.

Among his notable documentaries are: Boleto de Ida (1983); Luis Muñoz Marín: Un hombre, un pueblo, un propósito;  Diario de un poeta: la vida y obra de Juan Ramón Jiménez (1984) y Allá viene el temporal.  He also produced and directed La Guagua Aérea (The Air Bus, 1993), from an essay by Puerto Rican writer Luis Rafael Sánchez.  The film—which simultaneously provokes laughter and invites reflection in the viewer—centers around the theme of Puerto Rican emigration to the United States in the '60s.  It presents a group of colorful travelers in an airplane going to New York City trying to initiate a better life; the travelers share one common denominator—the Puerto Rican soil and their roots.  Other important films are Los Cuentos de Abelardo (1990); El deporte como expresión cultural de un pueblo (1979) (a film dedicated to an another notable Puerto Rican filmmaker and actor, Jacobo Morales), Cuentos para despertar (película, 1997); and the Life of (2011).   He currently produces Tenderete, a cultural TV program transmitted in Televisión Española (TVE), and Tenderete puertorriqueño, a Puerto Rican cultural program.

In 1986 he served as Vice President of the Educational Films Program of the United Nations. He has been honored by several organizations for his outstanding work on Puerto Rican themes in film and has received the Medal of the Virgen de la Candelaria, Patron of the Islas Canarias, from the Ayuntamiento de las Islas Canarias, for representing the Islands at the Global level.

Luis Molina-Casanova will speak on Wednesday, 17 August 08.30 – 09.15.