Born in Havana, February 19th, 1964. Poet and translator. Omar Pérez has published six books of poetry in his own country: Algo de lo sagrado. Unión, 1996. (Also published in the U.S in 2007, by Factory School, N.Y.; with translations by Kristin Dykstra and Roberto Tejada. www.factoryschool.org/pubs/perez); ¿Oíste hablar del gato de pelea? Letras Cubanas, 1998; (Translated by Kristin Dykstra and published by Shearsman, London, in 2010: Did you hear about the fighting cat?); Canciones y Letanías. Extramuros, 2002; Lingua Franca. Unión, 2009; He has also published a collection of essays on poetry and translation, La perseverancia de un hombre oscuro. Letras Cubanas, 1999; Crítica de la Razón Puta, obtained the 2010 Nicolás Guillén National Poetry Award, and was published also by Letras Cubanas. In the same year and with the same publisher, Omar Pérez offered a second collection of essays, El corazón mediterráneo. In 2016, he published Filantropical, with Letras Cubanas, and Sobras Escogidas, with Silueta, Miami, Florida. In 2018, Station Hill (N. Y.) published Cubanology, a book of days, while the Alabama University Press printed The race, a poem collection; both translated by Kristin Dykstra.Omar Pérez has consistently translated from the English, Italian, French and Dutch languages. He has published, among others, a (Cuban) Spanish version of Shakespeare´s As You Like It: Como les Guste; a translation of Dylan Thomas´s Collected Poems; an anthology of XX Century Italian poetry (L´Antimelancólico), a collection of Anglophone African poetry (Mágicos Intervalos) as well as (Lo que es) an anthology of Dutch verse. Numerous translations of poems, short stories and novels from the above mentioned languages, have been published in Cuba and abroad. He is a graduate from Havana University´s Faculty of Languages in English and North American Language and Literature, 1987. In Italian Language and Culture, from the Scuola per Stranieri di Siena, Italy, 1991. In Nederlands Taal en Sociaal Orientatie from Amsterdam´s ROC, 2005. Accompanied by his cajòn, he has performed his poems and songs in Havana, New York, Chicago, Taipei, Sao Paulo, New Orleans, Dublin, Cali, Medellìn, Buenos Aires and Woodstock, among other cities. He lives in Havana.
© Omar Pérez