5 Latinas Win Awards

Five Latina writers have won $20,000 awards each from the National Latino Communications Center to develop movie scripts for public television.

Helena Minor, associate director of the Los Angeles-based NLCC, said the awards were made because “we haven’t really yet seen programs on television that have been written by Latinas or expressed a Latina point of view.”

Winners from Los Angeles were Poli Marichal, for a project about gang-related violence in her native Puerto Rico, and Sylvia Morales, for a comedy about a young Chicano couple in the 1960s. Other recipients were Lourdes Portillo of San Francisco, Ana Maria Simo of New York City, and Nancy De Los Santos of Chicago.