Dr. Lasso-von Lang Scholarship Activities

Dr. Nilsa Lasso-von Lang

Scholarship Activities

Recent Publications:

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Description automatically generated Gloria Guardia (Panama): Critical Approaches. Essential Central American Writers Series, Volume #3, Casasola Editions, Brimfield, Massachusetts, 2024.

Gloria Guardia (1940-2019) was a luminous presence in the constellation of outstanding contemporary Latin American writers. She was an award-winning novelist and essayist, as well as a distinguished literary critic, philologist, lexicologist, and journalist.

Gloria Guardia (Panama): Critical Approaches is unique in Panamanian literature, as the only collection ever published of interviews, speeches, essays, and newspaper columns by an author, accompanied by commentaries on the creative works.

“The novel is the private history of nations,” said Balzac. Undoubtedly, Gloria Guardia, with her artistic activism and singular writing, takes readers to the most critical and, at the same time, most intimate moments lived across Central America, especially in Panama and in the Nicaragua of Sandino’s early-twentieth century struggle for national sovereignty.

The Last Game (1977), inaugural text of her trilogy Maramargo, is an acclaimed novel that questions long-held “truths” in the history of Panama, her native land. With access to family memoirs of political stewardship and newly opened public documents, Guardia embarked on a lifelong mission to reveal the story behind the headlines in her many creative narratives, some of which have been translated into English, Russian, French, and Italian.

Gloria Guardia (Panama): Critical Approaches delineates Guardia’s global trajectory as a passionate humanitarian advocating for human and civil rights. It highlights her significant contributions as an elected member of Academies of the Spanish Language (Spain, Nicaragua, Panama), her leadership in the worldwide Association of Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists, and Novelists known as PEN International, and, above all, her magnificent writing talent. Novels, short stories, essays, and profound meditations on literary creation, feminism, identity, and Central American women populate the vast universe of her rich legacy.

Dr. Nilsa Lasso-von Lang, the volume editor, presents an exceptional selection of original materials in addition to insightful approaches to Guardia’s literary art penned by a broad galaxy of engaged international critics from Australia, Colombia, Germany, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Puerto Rico, Spain, and the United States, crowned by an unprecedented display of personal and professional photographs.