Orbes 1959-2016: Tierra/Agua/Fuego, Orbe Terrestre, La Afrodita de Cnido, Razon de Eros, Naturaleza En El Espejo

Born in Havana, Cuba, Mercedes Cortázar resides in the US, of which she is a naturalized citizen. Her autobiographical novel and books of short stories and creative nonfiction are in process of preparation for publication. Cortázar was a founding member of the generation of Cuban poets and writers in Havana called El Puente (The Bridge), a movement in process of rediscovery at the present time. Cortázar's first book of poetry, El largo canto (The Long Chant), was the third book published by El Puente, and her work was included in El Puente's first poetry anthology, La novísima poesía cubana I (The Newest Cuban Poetry I). In response to El Puente's avant-garde editorial policy, and also because it had published Cortázar's work after she had gone into exile in the United States, the publishing house was closed by the Cuban Government and its members persecuted. Cortázar continued to write in New York while working in factories and restaurants, and at other blue-collar jobs. Her poems attracted the attention of Chilean literary critic and translator Servando Sacaluga, a professor of French at Columbia University, who translated her poems in Deux Poèmes de Mercedes Cortázar (1965), a bilingual Spanish-French edition of El largo canto (The Long Chant) and another long poem, Tierra (Earth). With a group of El Puente poets living in New York, Cortázar founded Protesta (Protest), considered to be the first literary magazine of Cuban writers in exile. She later joined with Cuban and Puerto Rican poets in New York to found La nueva sangre (The New Blood), a literary magazine that published Spanish-language writers and poets living in the US, Latin America and Spain. Cortázar's poems, stories, articles, essays and literary criticism in Spanish have appeared in publications including Mundo Nuevo (New World), published and edited in Paris by Uruguyan literary critic Emir Rodríguez Monegal, the first critic to describe the Boom in Latin American literature; Mexican literary magazine El corno emplumado (The Feathered Horn); and Spain's cultural magazine Turia. Cortázar's English-language articles and criticism have appeared in Review, a bi-monthly magazine published by the Center for Inter-American Relations, and elsewhere. Cortázar was poetry consultant for the English translation of José Lezama Lima's Paradiso, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, and she is a past recipient of the Cintas Fellowship for Literature.