ITHACA, N.Y. -- José Edmundo Paz-Soldán, visiting assistant professor of Hispanic literature in Cornell University's Department of Romance Studies, is one of five winners of the Juan Rulfo Prize for his short story "Dochera." The prize, named for Mexican novelist and short-story writer Juan Rulfo, author of Pedro Paramo, is the most prestigious short-story award for literature written in Spanish. Based in Paris, the award is sponsored by Radio Francia Internacional, Centro Cultural de Mexico and Le Monde Diplomatique.

There were 6,000 entries for the prize this year and 30 finalists, from which the five winners were selected. Cash prizes for the winners range from $1,700 to $5,200. Paz-Soldán won the second-highest award, $2,575, to be given by the Casa de América Latina. Judges for the Rulfo Prize have been prominent Latin-American writers, such as Mexican Fernando del Paso, Chileans Jorge Edwards and Luis Sepulveda, Guatemalan Augusto Monterroso and Peruvian critic Julio Ortega.

"Dochera," according to Paz-Soldán, is about a crossword-puzzle maker who, after falling in love with a mysterious woman, starts sending her a secret message within his crosswords, making up new definitions of things -- rivers, countries, etc. -- until he linguistically reinvents the universe.

Paz-Soldán earned his Ph.D. from Berkeley in May 1997, won a fiction prize in La Paz, Bolivia, in 1991 for his novel Dias de papel,and won a gold medal from the city council of Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 1995. He has published numerous scholarly articles, as well as short stories.

Paz-Soldán began a two-year stint in August 1997 as visiting assistant professor at Cornell, where he is teaching courses in Spanish-American literature and is an associate member of the Latin American Studies Program.