Alma Mater Literary Blog

Recounting the History of my Short Stories

I started my short story writing career after I read a Selected Reading short story entitled “El Pequeño Escribiente Florentino” (The Little Florentinian Writer). I had consistently published my short stories in the weekly billboard at the Instituto Alexander Von Humboldt, that I managed with the assistance of a few Grupo Progresista ("El GP") supporters, which I had founded in an effort to attain further leadership in the classroom. We had been encouraged by the “to be more” philosophy rather than the “to have more” philosophy, by our leading teacher Carmelo de La Ossa. Literarily, I had created a strong male character, Hermenegildo, inspired by a picture of my grandfather whom I did not know, and whom I only met after my twenty-third birthday. Likewise, I had created María, a coquette female character partly inspired by some of my classmates by that name, who were somewhat playful with me at times, and with whom I had a great deal of fun. Possibly, María also had to do with my very beautiful girlfriend at that time, Carmen. They were so well elaborated after a few years that I won several literary prizes based on more complex related short stories.

“The Blue Eyes of My Green María” (below), published on my weekly Humboldt outdoors billboard, is the short story that initiated it all for that character.

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At age 15, I got my first literary prize and my first regional newspaper publication with Diario del Caribe, a subsidiary of El Tiempo..

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El Retrato del Fantasma, my book title, and also my first university literary prize, while a student at Universidad del Norte, and published by the University magazine "Huellas". It was also published by the regional newspaper Diario del Caribe.

At 19: El Espectador's Magazin Dominical issue #32 publishes my winning short story "Do not follow me, María" at University of Cartagena National University Short Story Contest.

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At age 20: The cover portion of the winning short story "Ese Obsceno Personaje Llamado Maria".

Germ­­­­an Vargas, a member of Noble Prize winner Garc­ía Márquez’s literary and artistic group wrote in his then popular critical column in El Heraldo: “The fact that the jury has selected Noriega-Carranza’s short story deserves to be pointed out.” I believe this is because I had surpassed a few senior writers in the genre and won the contest both for its content and its writing style.

A portion of the winning short story "Ese Obsceno Personaje Llamado Maria"

Universidad del Valle communicating the winning prize (letter)

Universidad de Cartagena Communicating the winning prize (letter)

Universidad de Cartagena Communicating the winning prize (envelope)

My picture at age 20 after winning the national short story sponsored by Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia. The picture was taken at Diario del Caribe (Barranquilla, Colombia) possibly during a break, where I also worked as a part-time consultant, progamming in the Basic language to control the newspaper page production operations.