Gustavo Pérez Firmat

Cuban-born Gustavo Pérez Firmat's imaginative writing has been published in The Paris Review, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Baltimore Reviw, The Birmingham Poetry Review and other journals. He has also published books of literary and cultural criticism, including Saber de ausencia, A Cuban in Mayberry, The Havana Habit, Tongue Ties and Life on the Hyphen, a study of Cuban-American culture that was awarded the Eugene M. Kayden University Press National Book Award for 1994. He is also the author of a memoir, Next Year in Cuba, as well as several poetry collections in Spanish and English, among them Sin lengua, deslenguado, Bilingual Blues and Viejo Verde.

In 2004 Pérez Firmat was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1995, Pérez Firmat was named Duke University Scholar/Teacher of the Year, Duke University's highest award for undergraduate teaching. In 1997 Newsweek included him among "100 Americans to Watch for the 21st Century" and Hispanic Business Magazine selected him as one of the "100 Most Influential Hispanics" in the United States. In 2004 Pérez Firmat was named one of New York's thirty "Outstanding Latinos" by El Diario La Prensa.