A poet, fiction writer and scholar, Gustavo Pérez Firmat has
been called "a master of linguistic play" as well as "the
Terminator of cultural certainties." Born in Cuba and raised in
Miami, he attended Miami-Dade Community College and the University of
Miami. He earned his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University
of Michigan and taught at Duke University from 1978 to 1999. He is currently
the David Feinson Professor of Humanities at Columbia University. GPF
is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been
the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities,
the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Guggenheim Foundation.
He is the author of several books of literary and cultural criticism,
four collections of poetry, a novel and a memoir. His study of Cuban
American culture, Life on the Hyphen, was awarded the Eugene
M. Kayden University Press National Book Award for 1994. In 1995, Pérez
Firmat was named Duke University Scholar/Teacher of the Year. In 1997
Newsweek included him among "100 Americans to watch for the next
century" and Hispanic Business Magazine selected him as one of the "100
most influential Hispanics." In 2004 he was named one of New York
's thirty “Outstanding Latinos” by El Diario La Prensa. He divides
his time between New York City and Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
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