Helen Umaña

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Helen Elizabeth Umaña Portillo (* 1942 in Ocotepeque, Departamento Ocotepeque , Honduras ) is a Honduran writer and literary critic , best known for her studies of the literature of Honduras.

Life

Helen Umaña, whose parents went into exile from Guatemala in Honduras in 1950 for political reasons , completed a degree in Spanish language and Spanish literature at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala (USAC), from which she graduated with a licentiate . At the beginning of her studies, after several unrest in 1960, the Guatemalan civil war broke out , which continued in the following decades. After completing her studies, she initially took on a professorship at the USAC before going back into exile in Honduras in 1981 because of the political situation and the growing violence in Guatemala.

In Honduras, Helen Umaña settled in San Pedro Sula and took over a professorship at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma there. In the following years she belonged to a group of recognized writers and published poetic and literary works. As head of the Cronopios section of the daily newspapers Tiempo and La Prensa , she was responsible for the most important cultural supplements in the Honduran press. Her literary skills and her commitment to the culture of the country have been recognized by various public and private institutions, but also by various circles of intellectuals. In 1989 the government awarded her the literary prize named after Ramón Rosa , the Premio Nacional de Literatura Ramón Rosa . In 1998 she received the from the National Autonomous University of Honduras conferred and after José Trinidad Reyes named Premio José Trinidad Reyes . She is also a member of the Academia Hondureña de la Lengua and has participated in numerous congresses and seminars on Honduran literature.

In one of her last works, La novela hondureña (2006), Helen Umaña examined the works of around 100 Honduran storytellers such as Francisca Navas , Julio Escoto , Roberto Castillo , Samuel Trigueros and thus created a comprehensive representation of this literary genre. Also in her literary critical book La palabra iluminada , published in 2007 . El discurso poético en Honduras , she dealt with the works of Víctor Cáceres Lara and the poet Nelson E. Merren, who died on May 24, 2007 . In 2015 she wrote a review for the Guatemalan daily newspaper El Periódico on the indigenous film Ixcanul - Dreams at the foot of the volcano, directed by Jayro Bustamante .

Publications

  • Literatura hondureña contemporánea , 1986
  • Ensayos de literatura hondureña , 1992
  • Francisco Morazán en la literatura hondureña , 1995
  • Panorama crítico del cuento hondureño , 1999
  • La novela hondureña , 2006
  • La palabra iluminada. El discurso poético en Honduras , 2007

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "Ixcanul" o el poder del signo estético ( Memento from September 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ). In: El Periódico of September 21, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Umaña, Helen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Umaña Portillo, Helen Elizabeth (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Honduran poet, literary critic and university lecturer
DATE OF BIRTH 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Ocotepeque, Ocotepeque Department , Honduras