Helen Velando

Helen Velando (b. Montevideo, 3 December 1961) is a Uruguayan writer of books for children and young people. Recently, however, it has been brought to the public's attention that she plagiarized entire paragraphs from another Uruguayan writer.

Biography

She studied three years of law school but she left when occurring account that the art was the motor that moved her soul. She began to sing and to study theater and puppets, and got to have a blues band. She had many jobs: she sold books, shoes and clothes, made surveys, wove, was a theater educator and scriptwriter for comedy television. In 1989 she began to write adaptations for theater. In 1993, the year in which she gained a Florencio Sánchez Prize as the best new actress, she published her first book. Her great step was in 1999 when, after four years without publishing anything, her book "Detectives en el Parque Rodó" was a great success in Uruguay.

Recently, however, it was discovered that in one of her books she plagiariazed heavily the work of a fellow Uruguayan writer, Luis Martínez Cherro. Her book "Los Piratas del Santa Lucía" contains word by word, paragraph-long replicas of passages in his book "Crónicas de la costa".

Although legal action has been pursued on the part of Cherro, Velando has made no public statements regarding the numerous paragraphs she copied from his work.

Works

*"Las increíbles historias de Superma-pupu, una pulga diferente" (1993)
*"Una pulga interplanataria" (1995)
*"Cuentos de otras lunas" (1996)
*"Detectives en el Parque Rodó" (1999)
*"Misterio en el Cabo Polonio" (2001)
*"Detectives en el Cementerio Central" (2002)
*"Fantasmas en la Sierra de las Ánimas" (2002)
*"Los cazaventuras" 1, 2 y 3 (2003, 2004, 2005)
*"Memorias de una gripe" (2005)
*"Piratas del Santa Lucia" (2005)
*"Cazaventura y el Tesoro de las Guayanas(2006)