The Time I Won a Literary Award
The Little Mermaid has been my favorite fairy tale since I was six years old. Its core theme, sacrificing everything for love, moved me before I even knew how to tie the laces on the wine-colored shoes I wore to school. But, even though I loved it, I always thought the story had a fatal flaw: why would a creature blessed with the cool weightless life under the ocean trade for the weighted, hot scorching life above? I know it was for love, but I felt the story would make so much more sense the other way around. It seemed far more logical for a human to give up everything to become a mermaid than the reverse.
That question is how the story of Coral's Little Mermaid was born. It seems all my stories start with a question.
After two decades of reading constantly, voraciously, endlessly, I eventually realized that I could tell my own stories too. Of course, I decided I needed to learn how, so I took classes on creative writing and read books about the art and science of storytelling. By 2007, I finally had four novellas finished and needed to choose which one would be my self-publishing debut in Spanish. In the Dominican Republic, most writers self-publish, at least their first books. A writer friend of mine thought my comedy fairy tale called Seven Ways to Marry a Prince (Siete Maneras de Casarse con un Príncipe) was the strongest of the bunch. But, in the end, I had a strong pull toward the little sister of The Little Mermaid—as I liked to call her—so the story I had always wanted to tell won out.
It was very well received. Better than I could have ever dreamed. I submitted it to a few literary contests in my country, not expecting much, really. I had tried twice before with unpublished stories I'd written as a teenager with no luck. So, when I got the news that I'd won the Children's Literary Award of 2008 (Premio Nacional de Literatura Infantil Aurora Tavárez Belliard 2008), it felt like a win against all odds. It was, at the time, one of the most joyful moments of my life.
But more than the award itself, what I'll always treasure is the experience of touring schools to talk about my mermaid with children and young readers, and watching their faces light up. For the first time, I got to pay back a fraction of the joy that so many stories had given me from the other side of the page.
I am forever grateful to Hans Christian Andersen for creating my favorite fairy tale, and for inspiring me to go out into the world as a storyteller. Thank you, Hans.
