Yeilén Delgado Earns the América Bobia Prize

The work «De lo que se trata todo esto» (What All This Is About) by Matanzas native Yeilén Delgado Calvo earned the 2026 América Bobia National Poetry Prize, convened by Ediciones Vigía in Matanzas.

With the welcoming words of the publishing house’s director, Agustina Ponce, the jury, composed of writers Lourdes González Herrero, Eugenio Marrón Casanova, and Maylan Álvarez Rodríguez, winner of the previous edition of the contest, unanimously granted the laurel.

«For unfolding with breath and sustained cadence, to the benefit of a legendary image such as rain, a warm and sorrowful observance, grounded in the faithful everyday of the home, a precise portrait in the most intimate part of its character.»

The young laureate, also a journalist, had published a chapbook there titled «Radar,» and said the current poem deals with «the hard daily life of a mother with two small children, whose life links between bitterness and hope.»

Likewise, it fell to Alfredo Zaldívar, National Editing Prize winner, to present Maylan’s chapbook for her 2025 award-winning work, titled «Mientras Martí me contempla ¿orgulloso?» (While Martí Contemplates Me, Proud?), a beautiful art book with design by Marialba Ríos.

Zaldívar, creator of that contest in the 1980s, referred to the Union de Reyes writer’s work, from the time she earned her first Calendario Prize with the book «Naufragio del San Andrés» (Shipwreck of the San Andrés).

He noted that when he reads her poetry, he recognizes it by her seal in any of her texts, where anger and full awareness of her concept of woman pulsate at every moment, with freedom, without embellishment.

«Everything flows — the body, the house, the children, the dirty dishes before her… desires, dreams.»

The winning poem goes beyond the limits of her love for Martí, to update the Apostle’s humanity from the contemporary atmosphere of a woman of today, long-suffering and mature.

Maylan thanked the beautiful chapbook created by the Ediciones Vigía collective.

Present were Efrahim Pérez Izquierdo, director of the Provincial Book and Literature Center, along with family members, intellectuals, and friends.

Both poetesses received various gifts, among them two paintings by artist Adrián Gómez Sancho.

An enthusiastic audience witnessed the awarding of the contest that pays tribute to América Bobia Berdayes, an important Limonar writer whose verses dazzled in the mid-20th century.

Notes on the writing of Yeilén Delgado Calvo

Born in Matanzas in 1990. Writer and journalist. A graduate with a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and from the Narrative Techniques Course of the Onelio Jorge Cardoso Literary Training Center.

A member of the Hermanos Saíz Association and the Union of Journalists of Cuba, Delgado Calvo was the winner of the Portus Patris Narrative Prize 2021 with the book Todas las bestias de la tierra.

She also won the Delia Carreras National Poetry Contest and the Victoria de Girón Provincial Adult Short Story Contest; she obtained honorable mentions in the César Galeano Prize convened by the Onelio Center, in the Rubén Martínez Villena Cultural Journalism Contest, and in the chronicle genre of the July 26 National Journalism Contest.

Her verses have appeared in the Matanzas Artistic-Literary Magazine and in the anthologies Poetas en Matanzas VII (Ediciones Matanzas, 2015) and Versos en el horizonte de la Isla. Poesía Cubana Contemporánea (San Bernardo Editorial Fund, Chile, 2016).

Ediciones Vigía published her poems in the chapbook Radar (2016).

She works in the News Directorate of the Granma newspaper.