The Argentine writer and journalist Josefina Licitra has won the 2026 Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Literature Prize, awarded by the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL), unanimously for her novel Crac. The verdict was announced on November 2, 2026, and the jury selected the work from 135 novels by women authors from twelve countries.
The recognition places Licitra on a list that already includes Argentine authors such as Tununa Mercado, Claudia Piñeiro, Camila Sosa Villada and Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, as reported by El Universal. For the Spanish-language publishing circuit, the Sor Juana is one of the distinctions announced ahead of the FIL, the fair that this year marks its 40th edition and brings together publishers, booksellers and readers from Mexico, Latin America and Spain in Guadalajara. The novel addresses the rupture of the bond between a father and a daughter, and the silence that the author turned into literary material.
The prize carries 15 thousand dollars and will be presented on Wednesday, December 2 at 18:00 in the Juan Rulfo Auditorium at Expo Guadalajara, according to Excélsior. The jury, made up of Giselle Etcheverry Walker (Chile), Daniel Centeno Maldonado (Venezuela) and, for Mexico, Anamari Gomís, Patricia Córdova Abundis and Roberto Domínguez Cáceres, awarded an honorable mention to the Bolivian writer Giovanna Rivero for Alma oscura del alba. Licitra described her book as "an intimate, sorrowful, somewhat shameless book," and added that it was written from uncertainty, in an interview with El Universal. The work stems from the silence of her father, who lives in another country and stopped speaking to her for years. Licitra was born in La Plata in 1975 and is also the author of Los imprudentes.
A group of Sor Juana winners, among them Gioconda Belli, Margo Glantz and Claudia Piñeiro, will read fragments of their works on December 3 at 19:00 in the same auditorium. The verdict is final and the fair enters its awards season, with the ceremony on December 2 and the winners' reading the following day.
This article was written with the assistance of artificial intelligence from verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.
