“Outstanding novel’, he told himself so he would not cry like an old fairy, and he even thought that if he had the genius Sepúlveda in front of him, he would devour him with kisses, although later his Cuban friends would slap the label of faggot on him”.
Manuscripts of the dead
His first job in the field of literary editing began in the middle of 1989, when he joined with fellow writer Carlo Calcines in the anthology published by Senel Paz with stories from the freshest new writers: Los muchachos se divierten (The Boys Have Fun).
From the left to the right: the Cuban writers Jorge Félix Rodríguez, Ladislao Aguado and Amir Valle with his wife Berta. On the day when the Magazine OtroLunes was created.
But basically his work as an editor can be found in his collaborations with the country’s most important literary publications, in his digital magazine Letras en Cuba (The Arts in Cuba) (which put out 30 issues until “they told me that I couldn’t use the e-mail address the Ministry of Culture gave me to send that material”), and A título personal (Personal Address), (where, for similar reasons, he managed to post only the first issue on the Internet), as well as his numerous anthologies about Cuban fiction (more than six to date).
For several years he was the coordinator in Havana of the Cuban Cultural Collection of the publisher, Plaza Mayor, in Puerto Rico, acting, basically, as editor and organizer of the international literary prize for the novel, which during three consecutive years this publisher convened for Cuban writers on the island and in exile.
Presently he is the General Director of OtroLunes-Revista Hispanomericana de Cultura, a Spanish American Journal of Culture.