Rosina Conde receives the 2024 Inés Arredondo Fine Arts Prize for Literature

The writer Rosina Conde received the Inés Arredondo Fine Arts Prize for Literature 2024in a special ceremony that took place on the afternoon of Monday, September 9, at the Sinaloa Center for the Arts “Centenario.”

The award ceremony was chaired by Juan Salvador Aviles Ochoadirector of the Sinaloa Institute of Culture and Ernestina Yepiz, Director of Literature and Publishing at ISIC.

Connection with Sinaloa

The jury, made up of the playwright Carmen Boullosa; the writer and Gabriela Jaureguiand by the poet Yendi Ramosconsidered Rosina Conde’s work for “the general quality of her work”, which she described as “disruptive, borderline and unexpected”.

“It is a pleasure that the award has been given to the teacher Rosina, who has had ties with Sinaloa for a long time. We hope that the award will serve as an incentive for her to continue visiting us on future occasions and come to share her literary discourse with us,” said Ernestina Yépiz during the ceremony.

In his acceptance speech, Conde highlighted The influence of two Sinaloans which were key to finding his calling in literature: that of her father and that of Inés Arredondo herself.

“I was greatly nourished by my father’s stories when he told us about his childhood and adolescence in Cosalá and Los Mochis,” the writer recalled.

“I was always my father’s most faithful follower and from a very young age, he taught me to write verses and thanks to all the stories he told us, I also began to give free rein to my imagination,” she said.

These treasured memories of her childhood, the writer said, came back to her through the unique pen of Inés Arredondo, who opened the doors to a brave new world in which women were allowed to be the narrators of their own stories.

“What caught my attention was discovering these strong female characters who spoke in Sinaloa and who lived in these landscapes that I had grown up with when I came here every summer. Doña Inés’s characters were self-sufficient women, with the same character that I saw in my aunts, my mothers and my grandmothers,” the writer said.