Author: Yolanda Blanco
Born: 1970
Bio: Yolanda Blanco was born in Managua, Nicaragua. She attended the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua, in León, between 1970 and 1971. While studying at the university, she organized the first poetry lectures ever, featuring the top Nicaraguan women poets. Blanco went on to study art history and literature in France. During the Seventies, she worked for the creation of a new society in Nicaragua. However, in 1978, she was forced to move to Venezuela when her family's home was unjustifiably invaded by Sandinista officials. 

Although she was a well known young Nicaraguan poet during the Eighties, Blanco was not paraded by the Sandinista regime because she did not belong to its party. Blanco graduated with a degree in Literature from the Universidad Central de Venezuela. She was a member of "Calicanto", a literary workshop conducted by Venezuelan writer Antonia Palacios, and participated actively in the Venezuelan literary world. In 2005, Blanco won the Mariana Sansón Argüello National Poetry Award—a literary contest organized yearly by the Nicaraguan Association of Women Writers (ANIDE)—for her book De lo urbano y lo sagrado.