# Gloria Guardia

Gloria Guardia (1940 – 13 May 2019) was a Panamanian novelist, essayist and journalist whose works received recognition in Latin America, Europe, Australia and Japan. She was a Fellow at the Panamanian Academy of Letters and Associate Fellow at the Spanish Royal Academy, the Colombian and the Nicaraguan Academy of Letters

## Early life and education

Guardia was born in 1940. She was the youngest daughter of the Panamanian Consulting Engineer Carlos A. Guardia, co-founder of AIDIS, (Inter-American Association of Sanitary and Environmental Engineering), and descendant of Sebastian de la Guardia (c. 1640), one of Panamanian Founding Fathers. Her mother, Olga Zeledon, a native of Nicaragua, was the youngest daughter of the country's national hero, Benjamin Zeledón and his wife Ester Ramirez Jerez.
In 1958, Guardia graduated from Roycemorel-School, an independent, nonsectarian college preparatory school located in Evanston, Illinois. In 1960, she studied Philosophy and literature at the Complutense University in Madrid and Spanish literature and Iberoamerica at Madrid's Instituto de Cultura Hispánica. In the United States, she received a Bachelor of Arts degree "cum laude" from Vassar College in 1962 and a Master of Arts degree from Columbia University in 1968. That year, she presented a dissertation for a Ph.D. degree on Comparative Literature: Estudio sobre el pensamiento poético de Pablo Antonio Cuadra, which was revised for publication at Editorial Gredos, Madrid.

## Career
### Literary contributions

Her literary works include novels, essays, short stories and critical studies. She has been awarded several national and international literary awards for her works, including one from the Society of Spanish and Iberoamerican Writers in 1961, the Ricardo Miró National Prize for an essay or novel in 1966, the Central American Novel Prize in 1976, two awards (essay and short story) from the magazine Lotería in 1971, and 1996 and the National Short Story Award from the city of Bogotá, Colombia, in 1996. The jury underlined the fact that one of the reasons for selecting the book for this particular award was that it was the first postmodern short-story book ever to be published in the region. In 2000, her novel Libertad en llamas was short listed for the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Novel Prize in Mexico. In 2007, the Rockefeller Foundation selected her to be one of their novelist-in-residence at The Bellagio Center, where she wrote her novel El jardín de las cenizas, third part of the trilogy Maramargo. In 2014 her novel En el corazón de la noche was launched in Buenos Aires and second and third editions were launched by Penguin Random House in Bogota and Spain respectively. Her short stories appeared in Spain, the U.S., France, England, Italy, Poland and Japan.

### International contributions

From 1975 to 1995, she worked as a syndicated columnist for several periodicals, including La Prensa, Panama America, and Cambio. She served as ABC News correspondent in Panama and as consultant at Canal (channel) 5 (FETV) in Panama. In 1990 she collaborated on the twenty-first edition of the Dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy (DRAE) and the second edition of the Dictionary of Colombianismos for the Colombian Academy. She was the founder of the Panamanian chapter of the PEN-International and served as one of the seven executive council members of PEN from 1997 to 2002. Until 2004, she was a member of the Board of Trustees of the PEN International foundation. She also served as an International Vice President at PEN International.

## Personal life

Guardia's husband was Ricardo Alfaro, grandson of former Panamanian Presidents, Ricardo J. Alfaro and Alcibiades Arosemena. They had a daughter, Cristina Alfaro Carlis (Mrs. E. Scott Carlis) who lives with her husband and children in Los Ángeles, California and San Juan Capistrano, California. There were two grandchildren. Guardia and her husband divided their time between Bogotá, Panama City and Los Angeles.
She died in Bogota, 13 May 2019.