Cuba Celebrates Jose Marti´s Inclusion in Writers Hall of Fame

Cubans celebrate the inclusion of their National Hero, Jose Marti, in the New York Writers Hall of Fame, local media revealed today.

Marti (1853-1895), poet, essayist, novelist and dramatist, was admitted to the select list on June 5 at a ceremony held at the Princeton Club of New York.

The proposal of the Cuban patriot and intellectual to enter the New York Writers Hall of Fame was promoted by Marti's scholar and translator, Esther Allen, and the Cuban-American historian Ada Ferrer.

The room is a project of the Empire State Center for the Book, an institution that every year, since 2010, includes in its registry several writers, living or dead, according to their contributions to the literary legacy of the city.

The Cuban patriot lived in New York from 1880 to 1895, a period in which, in addition to his political work, he carried out an intense literary work marked by the publication of his poems 'Ismaelillo' and 'Versos Sencillos'.

Marti devoted to journalism an important part of his time in the United States, publishing texts for Latin American and local newspapers, but his literary facet in that country undoubtedly reaches its greater brilliance with 'La Edad de Oro' (The Golden Age) -a magazine for children- and the foundation of the newspaper Patria, the scholars agree.

Along with Marti, intellectuals Ira Gershwin -George Gershwin's brother, composer of the world famous 'Rhapsody in blue'-, E.L. Konigsburg, Russell Shorto, Colson Whitehead and Jacqueline Woodson entered the New York Writers Hall of Fame.