Silvana Paternostro

Silvana Paternostro (born c. 1962 in Barranquilla, Colombia) is a Colombian-American journalist and author who has written extensively on Cuba and Central and South America. She specializes in women's issues, and has also written comprehensively about AIDS, revolutionary movements, underground economies, and the intersection of literature, music and other cultural forms with politics and economics. In 1999 she was selected by Time/CNN as one of 50 Latin American Leaders for the New Millennium.

Early life and education Paternostro was born circa 1962 in Barranquilla, Colombia. She left Colombia for the United States in 1977 at the age of fifteen. A 20th-anniversary edition was published in Colombia in 2023.

My Colombian War (2007) Her second book, My Colombian War: A Journey Through the Country I Left Behind, mixes memoir with history and reportage to tell the story of Colombia's 40-year-old civil war and uncover the truth about United States involvement in the country. It was published by Henry Holt in September 2007. The English translation, Solitude & Company, was published in March 2019 in translation by Edith Grossman. Foreign rights have been acquired in Brazil, India, Russia, Serbia, Poland, and China.

Film Paternostro was associate producer on Che: The Argentine and Che: Guerrilla, a two-part biographical film about Che Guevara directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Benicio del Toro. The film started shooting in July 2007 and premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008.

Awards and recognition 1997 – Dorothea Lange–Paul Taylor Prize, Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, with photographer Ernesto Bazan, for El Periodo Especial, a documentary project on daily life in Cuba during the Special Period. 1998 – PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction, nomination, for In the Land of God and Man 1999 – Time/CNN 50 Latin American Leaders for the New Millennium Senior Fellow, World Policy Institute