The NYC launching of The Cuban Comedy, the latest novel by award-winning poet
and writer Pablo Medina. Medina’s latest work revolves around a love story set in
post-revolutionary Cuba, steeped in political satire, poetry, and the lightest touches
of magical realism.
The author will be interviewed by the renowned literary critic Isabel Alvarez Borland
and acclaimed journalist and Pushcart Prize-winning author Ana Menéndez. With an introduction by poet and writer Lourdes Gil, director of the CCCNY Literature Program.
Praise for The Cuban Comedy:
“A literary triumph.” ~ NBC News
A sharp, beautifully rendered look at how political ideology can warp even the best art. At times hilarious, at times tragic, ‘The Cuban Comedy’ keeps you rooting for its idealistic poet-heroine, Elena, as she navigates an impossible post-revolution Cuba. Politics may be able to crush poetry, but in this elegy, the masterful Pablo Medina reminds us again of the sanctity of intellectual freedom, no matter the costs.”
—Ana Menéndez, Author
“In this compulsively readable and darkly absurdist novel, Medina is at his best.”
— Diego Báez, Booklist
“Medina is a talented storyteller and The Cuban Comedy is a smart, poignant look at a country where politics play a huge part in everyday life and poetry may lead to salvation — or doom.”
—Gabino Iglesias, NPR
“Award-winning poet, novelist, translator, memoirist, Pablo Medina is a literary magician and ‘The Cuban Comedy’ is his finest spell— a luminous novel of poets trying to write and love their way through a Revolution. Witty, wily and pulsing with indomitable life ‘The Cuban Comedy’ is an incantation— summoning an island, a lost time and that most necessary of all things: wisdom.”
—Junot Díaz, Author
This literary event is part of the CreateNYC Language Access program, and it will be held in English, followed by a bilingual Q&A.
INSTITUTO CERVANTES
211 East 49th Street, bet. 2nd & 3rd Aves., NYC
FREE ADMISSION
RSVP at: info@cubanculturalcenter.org
This will be a bilingual presentation.
Pablo Medina was born in Havana, Cuba, and moved to New York City with his family at the age of twelve. He received graduate and undergrduate degrees from Georgetown University. Medina is the author of several poetry collections, most recently Soledades (poems in Spanish, 2017) and The Island Kingdom (2015); a memoir titled Exiled Memories: A Cuban Childhood (1990); several translations, among them The Weight of the Island: Selected Poems of Virgilio Piñera (2014) and Alejo Carpentier’s The Kingdom of This World (2017). His novels include The Marks of Birth (1994), The Return of Felix Nogara (2000), The Cigar Roller (2004), Cubop City Blues (2012), and, most recently, The Cuban Comedy (2019).
Isabel Alvarez Borland is Distinguished Professor Emerita of 
Arts and Humanities in the Department of Spanish at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA. Her books include Cuban-American Literature of Exile: From Person to Persona (1999) and Discontinuidad y ruptura en Guillermo Cabrera Infante (1982). She is also co-editor of Negotiating Identities in Cuban American Art and Literature (2009) and Identity, Memory, and Diaspora (2008). She is currently Associate Editor of Hispania and was Co-Director of the 2006 NEH Seminar for College Teachers: Negotiating Identities in Art, Literature and Philosophy: Cuban Americans and American Culture. She has published essays on Cuban and Latin American Literature in scholarly journals such as Hispanic Review, MLN and Revista Iberoamericana.
Ana Menéndez has published four books of fiction: Adios, Happy Homeland!, The Last War, Loving Che and In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd, whose title story won a Pushcart Prize. She has worked as a journalist in the United States and abroad, lastly as a prize-winning columnist for The Miami Herald. As a reporter, she wrote about Cuba, Haiti, Kashmir, Afghanistan and India. Her work has appeared in publications including Vogue, Bomb Magazine, The New York Times and Tin House and has been included in several anthologies, including The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature. She has a B.A. in English from Florida International University and an M.F.A. from New York University. A former Fulbright Scholar in Egypt, she has also lived in India, Turkey and The Netherlands, where she designed a creative writing minor at Maastricht University. She is now a program director with Academic Affairs at FIU.
This event is co-sponsored by Instituto Cervantes
And is supported by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs
