The members of the jury of the III Premi ADHUC 2018, organized by ADHUC—Research Centre on Theory, Gender and Sexuality and the Consolidated Research Group Creació i Pensament de les Dones (Universitat de Barcelona), have decided to grant the award to the work Sonrisas verticales. Homoerotismo femenino y narrativa erótica, by Estrella Díaz Fernández. This book offers an analysis of the literary representations of feminine homoerotism in the collection “La sonrisa vertical”. The book will be published in Icaria Editorial's series "Mujeres y culturas".
“La sonrisa vertical” (1977-2014), one of the most important collections published in the last quarter of the 20th century, started, in 1980, to gather texts dealing with characters and women with heterodox sexualities ignored until then. Two of the fundamental texts on lesbianism, Entre todas las mujeres (1992), by Isabel Franc, and Tu nombre escrito en el agua (1995), by Irene González Frei, were also included in the collection. Estrella Díaz’s work focuses on the representations of homoerotism in “La sonrisa vertical” without bearing in mind the biological sex of the author. In this way, addressing fiction that portrays lesbian characters allows for reflection on the importance of gender and literary studies, and on the convenience of considering a novel authored by a man a “lesbian text”.
