Local writer to receive ‘Guatemalan Writer of the Year’ award next week in Hollywood

Award part of “Celebration of La Semana del Guatemalteco en Los Angeles”

René Corado, a Guatemalan biologist, writer and resident of Oxnard, will be honored on Aug. 25 with the “Guatemalan Writer of the Year” award presented by the Comite Semana Del Guatemalteco.

"El Lustrador — Dreams of a Shoeshine Boy." Courtesy image.

Corado published his first book in Spanish — “El Lustrador / Dreams of a Shoeshine Boy” and participated in La Feria Chapina / the Guatemalan Fair on July 9 at Exposition Park in Los Angeles.

El Lustrador is his autobiographical story of growing up as a youth who shines shoes in the streets of Guatemala and his eventual journey to the United States, Corado stated on his website at http://ellustrador.org

Corado, who was born in Guatemala and has lived in the United States since 1981, is a biologist and the collections manager of the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology in Camarillo, the museum with the largest collection of eggs and nests of birds of the world, with more than one million eggs and more than 20,000 nests, he stated on his website.

Since late 1980’s he conducted research projects in the Amazon jungle of Ecuador, as well as in Costa Rica and California, in 2001, started a project of reproduction and distribution of birds in Guatemala, on the present visit this country twice a year to conduct his research.

René Corado. Courtesy image.

He has previously published Egg & Nest with Rosamond Purcell, Linnea Hall (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008); Dreams of a Shoeshine Boy (Vanity Press, 2011) Edited Birds’ Nests of the World (Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology, 2012) previously published in Japanese.

Click here to read the recognition letter in Spanish