Gilberto Owen

Biography Officially registered as Gilberto Estrada, son of Margarita Estrada from Michoacán, Gilberto Owen was born in Rosario, Sinaloa (May 13, 1904). He spent some of his early years (1919–1923) in Toluca, where he studied at the Instituto Científico y Literario. In 1923, he left Toluca and went to Mexico City, after he got contact to General Álvaro Obregón, who engaged him in the Secretaría de la Presidencia, where he served from August 1923 to June 1928. He matriculated in the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria. At this time he met the actress Clementina Otero, and people like Bernardo Ortiz de Montellano, Salvador Novo, Xavier Villaurrutia, Jorge Cuesta, Carlos Pellicer, Jaime Torres Bodet, José Gorostiza, Enrique González Rojo and others, when he joined the group Los Contemporáneos, where he also wrote for the magazine "Ulises" in 1926. He is presumed to be the romantic one and the least civilized of the group.

He spent some years in Bogota where he worked as a journalist and newspaper translator. A compilation of his work in Bogota, Colombia, has been published. Editors Celene García Ávila and Antonio Cajero rescued from El Tiempo (1933–1935) articles and chronicles that display a variety of styles and deal with topics such as politics, extraordinary facts and lifestyle in Latin America. This book was published by Miguel Angel Porrua and Autonomous University of the State of Mexico (UAEM) in 2009.

In July 1928 and at the end of 1932 in Colombia, where he married Cecilia Salazar Roldán on December 2, 1935, In Bogotá he published sporadically in the newspaper "El Tiempo".

A literature prize is awarded in his name. Owen is also a central character in the novel Faces in the Crowd (2011) by Valeria Luiselli.

Works

La llama fría (short-novel), 1925 Desvelo, 1925 Novela como nube (prose), 1928 Línea, 1930 Libro de Ruth, 1944 Perseo vencido, 1948 Simbad el varado, 1948 Poesía y prosa, 1953 Primeros versos, 1957 El infierno perdido, 1978 Obras, 1979