Daína Chaviano

Daína Chaviano (Spanish: [daˈina tʃaˈβjano]) (born 19 February 1957, Havana) is a Cuban-American writer of French and Asturian descent. She has lived in the United States since 1991.

She is considered one of the three most important female fantasy and science fiction writers in the Spanish language, along with Angélica Gorodischer (Argentina) and Elia Barceló (Spain), forming the so-called “feminine trinity of science fiction in Ibero-America.”

In Cuba, she published several science fiction and fantasy books, becoming the most renowned and best-selling author in those genres in Cuban literature.

She was born in Havana, the eldest of four children of an economist father, and a mother with two Ph.D.: one in Philosophy and Letters, and the other in Psychology.

When she had barely begun her university studies, she won the first science fiction competition ever organized in Cuba with her short story collection Los mundos que amo (The Worlds I Love), in 1979. After the book was published (1980), the main story was adapted and published as a photonovel in 1982, selling 200,000 copies in 3 months, an unprecedented fact that started her popularity as an author. The plot – almost the same in the short story and its photonovel version – has been considered "an editorial phenomenon" that "questioned the hierarchical structures that the governing institutions of the revolutionary culture imposed in the literary field as early as 1960". This sales record "broke with an editorial logic that considered science fiction as a minor genre."

After earning a bachelor's degree in English Language and Literature at the University of Havana, she established the first science fiction literary workshop in her country, which she named “Oscar Hurtado” in honor of the father of that genre on the Caribbean island.

In 1991, she left Cuba, establishing residency in the United States, where she worked as a translator, columnist, and editor. In 1998, she achieved international recognition when she was awarded the Azorín Prize for Best Novel in Spain for El hombre, la hembra y el hambre. This work forms part of her series «The Occult Side of Havana», together with Casa de juegos, Gata encerrada, and La isla de los amores infinitos (The Island of Eternal Love, Riverhead Books, 2008). The series has been described as “the most coherent novelistic project of its generation, indispensable for understanding the social psychology and spiritual vicissitudes of the Cuban people.” The Island of Eternal Love has been published in 26 languages, making it the most widely translated Cuban novel of all time. In 2007, the novel was awarded the gold medal at the Florida Book Awards, in the category Best Book in Spanish Language.

In 2004, she was the guest of honor at the 25th International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts (ICFA) in the United States. It was the first time that honor had ever been conferred on a Spanish-language writer. In November 2014, she was the guest of honor during the University Book Fair in Tabasco (Mexico), where she received the Malinalli National Award for the Promotion of Arts, Human Rights, and Cultural Diversity, which until then had only received figures of Mexican culture and society. It was the first time this award was given to an international figure.