Early life

Pérez Firmat was born in Havana

Havana

Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...

, Cuba, and raised in Miami, Florida. He was educated at Miami-Dade Community College, The University of Miami

University of Miami

The University of Miami is a private, non-sectarian university founded in 1925 with its main campus in Coral Gables, Florida, a medical campus in Miami city proper at Civic Center, and an oceanographic research facility on Virginia Key., the university currently enrolls 15,629 students in 12...

, and The University of Michigan

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

, where he earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature. He taught at Duke University

Duke University

Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...

 from 1979 to 1999 and is currently the David Feinson Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

.

Awards and accomplishments

Pérez Firmat has been the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Mellon Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 2004 Pérez Firmat was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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

El Diario La Prensa

El Diario la Prensa is the largest and oldest Spanish-language daily newspaper in New York City, and the oldest Spanish-language daily in the United States. Published by ImpreMedia, the paper covers local, national and international news with an emphasis on Latin America, as well as human-interest...

. In 2005 he was selected Educator of the Year by the National Association of Cuban American Educators.

Career

Pérez Firmat is the author of many books and numerous essays and reviews. His books of literary and cultural criticism include:

• Idle Fictions (Duke, 1982; rev. ed. 1993)
• Literature and Liminality (Duke, 1986)
• The Cuban Condition (Cambridge, 1989; rpt. 2005)
• Do the Americas Have a Common Literature? (Duke, 1990)
• Life on the Hyphen (Texas, 1994; Spanish version: Vidas en vilo, Colibrí, 2000)
• My Own Private Cuba (Colorado, 1999)
• Cincuenta lecciones de exilio y desexilio (Universal, 2000)
• Tongue Ties (Palgrave, 2003).

He has also published several collections of poetry in English and Spanish-- Carolina Cuban (Bilingual Press, 1987), Equivocaciones (Betania, 1989), Bilingual Blues (Bilingual Press, 1995); Scar Tissue (Bilingual Press, 2005)--a novel, Anything but Love (Arte Público, 2000); and a memoir, Next Year in Cuba (Doubleday 1995; rev. ed. 2000; rpt. Arte Público, 2005; Spanish version: El año que viene estamos en Cuba, Arte Público, 1997).

Next Year in Cuba was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize

Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...

 in non-fiction in 1995. Life on the Hyphen was awarded the Eugene M. Kayden University Press National Book Award for 1994 and received Honorable Mention in the Modern Language Association

Modern Language Association

The Modern Language Association of America is the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature...

’s Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize and the Latin American Studies Association’s Bryce Wood Book Award.

Pérez Firmat’s poems and stories have appeared in many magazines, journals and anthologies.