Jorge Olivera Castillo (b.

Havana Havana (; Spanish: ''La Habana'' ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of the La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...

, 1961) is a Cuban poet and

dissident A dissident is a person who actively challenges an established Political system, political or Organized religion, religious system, doctrine, belief, policy, or institution. In a religious context, the word has been used since the 18th century, and ...

. He worked as a journalist for the Cuban state-run television station ICRT for 10 years. He was briefly detained in 1992 for trying to leave the country on a raft; in 1993, he left his position at ICRT and began writing reports for

Radio Martí Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitt ...

, a U.S.-funded,

Miami Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...

-based station critical of the Cuban government. With two other journalists, he founded an independent news agency, Havana Press, in 1995, and later became the director. Olivera Castillo was arrested in 2003 as part of the Black Spring crackdown and sentenced to eighteen years in prison for writing articles "against national independence and Cuba's economy". In prison, he spent nine months in

solitary confinement Solitary confinement is a form of imprisonment in which the inmate lives in a single cell with little or no meaningful contact with other people. A prison may enforce stricter measures to control contraband on a solitary prisoner and use additi ...

, and suffered from a range of health problems. He began writing poetry and fiction while in prison as a coping mechanism. His wife, Nancy Alfaya, became a member of the

Ladies in White Ladies in White ( es, italics=no, Damas de Blanco) is an opposition movement in Cuba founded in 2003 by wives and other female relatives of jailed dissidents and those who have been made to disappear by the government. The women protest the impri ...

, agitating for his release. After international pressure, he was released for health reasons after serving only 18 months of his sentence, but remained under close supervision. He is currently a visiting scholar at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

Works

Poetry

* ''Confesiones antes del crepúsculo''. Miami: Ed. Proyecto de Bibliotecas Independientes, 2005. * ''En cuerpo y alma''. Ed. Olgy and Olega Krylovových. Prague: PEN Czech Republic, 2008. (Spanish and Czech) :, 2010. (Spanish and French) * ''Sobrevivir en la boca del lobo''. Madrid: Editorial Hispano Cubana, 2012. . * ''Cenizas alumbradas''. Warsaw: Lech Walesa Foundation, 2010. (Spanish and Polish) * ''Tatuajes en la memoria''. Prague, 2013. * ''Quemar las naves''. iami Neo Club Ediciones, 2015. .

Short stories

* ''Huésped del infierno''. Valencia: Editorial Aduana Vieja, 2007. . * ''Antes que amanezca : y otros relatos''. Buenos Aires: Fundación Cadal, 2010. .

References

External links

Jorge Olivera Castillo
at PayoLibre.com (in Spanish) Cuban male poets 1961 births Living people 21st-century Cuban poets 21st-century male writers {{Cuba-poet-stub