Background

Manrique was born in Barranquilla

Barranquilla

Barranquilla is an industrial port city and municipality located in northern Colombia, near the Caribbean Sea. The capital of the Atlántico Department, it is the largest industrial city and port in the Colombian Caribbean region with a population of 1,148,506 as of 2005, which makes it Colombia's...

, Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

 and earned a B.A. from the University of South Florida

University of South Florida

The University of South Florida, also known as USF, is a member institution of the State University System of Florida, one of the state's three flagship universities for public research, and is located in Tampa, Florida, USA...

.

Writing career

His first poetry volume won Colombia's National Poetry Award. Additionally, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship

Guggenheim Fellowship

Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...

 to write his memoirs and has contributed to Shade (1996), a gay, black fiction anthology. He has also produced the non-fictional book, Eminent Maricones which explores the works of Reinaldo Arenas

Reinaldo Arenas

Reinaldo Arenas was a Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright who despite his early sympathy for the 1959 revolution, grew critical of and then rebelled against the Cuban government.- Life :...

, Manuel Puig

Manuel Puig

Manuel Puig was an Argentine author...

, and Federico García Lorca

Federico García Lorca

Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca was a Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27. He is believed to be one of thousands who were summarily shot by anti-communist death squads...

. In 1999 he was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award.

Teaching career

He has taught creative writing at Mount Holyoke College

Mount Holyoke College

Mount Holyoke College is a liberal arts college for women in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It was the first member of the Seven Sisters colleges, and served as a model for some of the others...

, New York University

New York University

New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

, and The New School for Social Research. He is currently a professor in the M.F.A. program 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...

.

Select Works

• Our Lives Are the Rivers (2006)
• My Night with Federico García Lorca (2003)
• Eminent Maricones (1998)
• Twilight at the Equator (1997)
• Latin Moon in Manhattan (1992)

External links

• Official Website
• Biography - HarperCollins
• Biography - glbtq.com
  Glbtq.com
  glbtq.com is an online encyclopedia that presents detailed biographies of notable gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer people. It was named one of the "Best Free Reference Web Sites" in 2005 by the American Library Association....
  
  
• Biography - 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...