Marilyn Bobes León (born María de los Ángeles Bobes León; 1955 in Havana, Cuba) is a Cuban poet, novelist, literary critic and editor.
Bobes began her studies at University of Havana in 1974 and earned a bachelor's degree in History in 1978. She continued her professional life as a journalist working for major news outlets such as Prensa Latina and the magazine Revolución y Cultura. She made her debut in the field of poetry when her collection of poems La aguja en el pajar (published in 1979) won the David Literary Award for Poetry in 1979.
Later, in 1996, her collection of short stories, Alguien tiene que llorar (published in 1995) won the award Casa de las Américas. This same year, Bobes published Estatuas de sal with Mirta Yáñez, a Cuban philologist, teacher and writer. Estatuas de sal was the first collection of fiction of Cuban female writers.
She won the award Premio Latinoamericano de Cuento Edmundo Valdés in Mexico in 1993 and Premio de Cuento Hispanoamericano Femenino Magda Portal in Peru in 1994 for her poem "Alguien tiene que llorar."
In 2005, she received the award Premio Casa de las Américas de Novela for her novel Fiebre de invierno, and in 2016 the award Julio Cortázar for her story "A quien pueda interesar."
Furthermore, between 1993 and 1997 she served as vice president of the Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba (National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, UNEAC). In an interview she mentions she left UNEAC because she believed she could make a change in the world more effectively through her writing.
She was married for six years to the writer Jean Portante from Luxembourg. They met at a poetry festival in Macedonia.
Early life and education
Marilyn Bobes began writing her first poems when she was about twelve or thirteen years old. In an interview she remembers that when one of her school friends from Chile introduced her to famous artists such as César Vallejo, Juan Gelman and Roque Dalton, she realized she wanted to pursue writing. During this time (around 1970) she was also influenced by music that was coming out in Cuba by Silvio Rodríguez, Pablo Milanés and Catalan singer and songwriter Joan Manuel Serrat. During her teenage years, her mother showed Bobes' poems to the now deceased poet Roberto Branly (her neighbor's friend). He advised Bobes to attend literary workshops at the Brigada Hermanos Sainz, an organization that unites young Cuban writers and artists. In these workshops she received substantial criticism for her work, since, unlike that of her peers, her poetry was not about the socialist reality in Cuba, but about sexual liberty, Catholic dogmas and the breaking of tradition.
She attended the University of Havana in 1974 and received a bachelor's degree in History in 1978. Throughout her studies, she continued writing poetry on her own, as she feared that her writing was not going to be accepted by her peers. She would only share her writing to a small group of friends who also shared an interest in reading and writing about non-traditional themes. Among these, poet Andrés Reynaldo.
Her first collection of poems, Alguien que está escribiendo su ternura, won an honorary mention in the "13 de marzo" poetry competition at University of Havana in 1978. In 1979 she won the "Premio David" award of the Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba (UNEAC) for her poetry collection titled La aguja en el pajar. She contends that winning the "Premio David" award marked her official entrance into the Cuban literary world.
Career after university
Journalism
After graduating University of Havana with a degree in History in 1978, Bobes dedicated her professional career to journalism. She notes that she chose this career path because it seemed like the only way she could make a living through writing. She worked as an editor for the culture section of Prensa Latina and the magazine Revolución y cultura for over ten years. In 1978 the Unión de Periodistas de Cuba (Union of Cuban Journalists) granted her an award for writing a series of articles about popular Cuban music. In an interview she says that her time in the journalism field, especially in the Culture department of Prensa Latina, served as a way for her to reflect on feminism and gender inequality especially in the work place. Most of the people she worked with in the Culture department of Prensa Latina were women, while all her bosses were male. She also sees her career in journalism as being important in her formation as a writer as it gave her discipline in her writing.