Born June 16: Jaime Manrique

Born illegitimately in Colombia of an adulterous union, Jaime Manrique was not publicly acknowledged by his rich, prominent father who soon moved on to another mistress. His childhood struggles are just one facet of Manrique's landmark queer Latino Lit book Eminent Maricones: Arenas, Lorca, Puig, and Me. Some of the same early memories also surface in his book of poems, My Night with Federico García Lorca. His mother moved the family to Florida, where she became a domestic servant and Jaime excelled at school, earning his BA in English from the University of South Florida. After two more or less bisexual novels that got a lot of attention in Colombia, Manrique's first openly gay novel Latin Moon in Manhattan made a splash here in 1992. Five years later he edited Besame Mucho: New Gay Latino Fiction, which features seventeen short stories. He's won a Guggenheim for his nonfiction, and four years ago he made a foray into Isabel Allende and Tomas Eloy Martinez territory with Our Lives Are the Rivers, his long-promised novel about Manuela Saenz, Simón Bolívar's mistress. It won the International Latino Book Award for best historical novel. His newest book is Cervantes Street, which earned rave blurbs from Junot Diaz, Esmeralda Santiago, and Edith Grossman. Read him.