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tender a man (c) Andrea Costas
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Yolanda Castaño was born in Santiago de Compostela, Spain in 1977, and holds a BA in Spanish Language and Literature and with Media Studies. Apart from having an 18 year career as a poet and a culture manager, Yolanda has been a columnist and has worked in Galician TV for many years (Galician Audiovisual Academy Award as ‘Best TV Communicator 2005’). She has published 5 poetry books in Galician and Spanish, and a couple of compilations. She has won several poetry awards, including the National Critics Award, the Espiral Maior Poetry Award and the Ojo Crítico (best poetry book by a young author in Spain. She is a cultural activist, regularly organising poetry readings, festivals and literary workshops. She was the General Secretary of the Galician Language Writers Association and she has made her contribution to many written media, books, anthologies, conferences and many readings or multimedia poetry performances inside and outside Galicia – including many international poetry festivals – mostly around Europe and America but also in China, Tunisia and Japan. She has coordinated collective books, art and poetry exhibitions and has published three poetry books for children and one of translations. She has been involved in many different experiences of blending poetry with music, performance, dance, architecture, visual and audiovisual arts, and even cookery. Some of her poems have been translated into more than fifteen languages. In 2011 she held two international fellowships as a writer-in-residence, in Rhodes (Greece) and Munich (Germany).