Virgil Suárez

Virgil Suárez was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1962, and moved to the United States in 1974. He received his MFA in Creative Writing in 1987 from Louisiana State University. His books of poetry include: Guide to the Blue Tongue (University of Illinois Press, 2002); Banyan (2001), for which he won the Book Expo America/Latino Literature Hall of Fame Poetry Prize; In the Republic of Longing (1999); Garabato Poems (1999); and You Come Singing (1998). He is also a novelist, and has written about his experience as a Cuban refugee and a Cuban-American in his memoirs Infinite Refuge (Arte Público Press, 2002) and Spared Angola: Memories from a Cuban-American Childhood (1997). His work has been included in many anthologies, such as Paper Dance: 55 Latino Poets (2002).

Suárez has achieved such distinctions as the Florida State Individual Artist Grant, a G. MacCarthur Poetry Prize, and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. He has served as a Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Panelist in 2000 and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Panel/Judge in 1999. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida, where he is an associate professor of creative writing at Florida State University, Tallahassee.