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Reinaldo Arenas was a Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright born in Holguín in 1943. As a teenager he joined Fidel Castro's revolutionary movement. He moved to Havana in 1961 and was a researcher at the Biblioteca Nacional de Cuba José Martí from 1963 to 1968. He later worked as an editor for the Instituto Cubano del Libro (1967-1968) and as a journalist and editor for La Gaceta de Cuba (1968-1974).

Arenas' first novel, Celestino antes del alba (1967) was the only one of his works to be published in Cuba. His second novel, El mundo alucinante (1969), was clandestinely taken out of Cuba and first published in French. During the 1970s, Arenas was imprisoned for his writings and homosexuality.

He eventually became a vocal critic of Castro's government, and in 1980, he fled Cuba during the Mariel Boatlift. Once living in the United States, he published the following works: Otra vez el mar (1982); La vieja rosa (1980); Necesidad de libertad (1986); La loma del ángel (1987); and El portero (1988).

Affected by AIDS, Arenas died by suicide in 1990. His posthumous works include Viaje a La Habana: novela en tres viajes (1990) and Antes que anochezca: autobiografía (1992).

Luis Conte Agüero was born in Santiago de Cuba on July 6, 1924. He was a journalist and politician belonging to the Partido Ortodoxo. He was exiled to Venezuela in the 1950s and returned to Cuba on January 6, 1959, working in radio and television and initially supporting the Cuban Revolution. Within a few months of Castro's rule, Conte Agüero broke with the revolutionary movement's communist turn and was sentenced to death by firing squad. He escaped the island and settled in Miami, where he has been a critic of the regime.

He is the author of more than 40 books, including "Cuba: historia de su historia," "América contra el comunismo," and "Mis memorias: Cuba y América."

Rafael Esténger was a Cuban poet, historian, and literary critic who worked in Cuba primarily in the early- to mid-20th century. He was a member of the National College of Journalists and the National Academy of Arts and Letters. Born in Santiago de Cuba in 1899, he graduated from the University of Havana in 1925. He held multiple positions throughout his professional career, including as a lawyer in Oriente, municipal secretary in Santiago de Cuba, and advisor to the National Institute of Economic Reform during the government of Gerardo Machado.

His poetry gained international acclaim, with his first works published in La Independencia, El Cubano Libre and other newspapers in Santiago de Cuba. He was the editor of El Sol and contributed to the publications Letras, El Fígaro, Cuba Contemporánea, Alerta, Avance, and Bohemia. Other famous works include the anthology Cien de las mejores poesías cubanas and Homenaje a Maceo.

Carolina García-Aguilera (b. July 13, 1949) is a Cuban American fiction writer who was born in Havana, Cuba. She is the author of a seven-book series – featuring a Cuban-American female private investigator based in Miami – as well as three additional stand-alone novels, numerous short stories, and contributions to anthologies. García-Aguilera holds a B.A. in History and Political Science from Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, a Master's degree in Language and Linguistics from Georgetown University, an MBA in Finance from the University of South Florida, and has continued studies for a PhD in Latin American Affairs from the University of Miami.

Shortly after Fidel Castro took power, when García-Aguilera was ten years old, her family left Cuba and moved to Palm Beach, Florida, and remained there for two years before moving to New York. She spent four years at Miss Porter’s School in Connecticut, before continuing on with further education. García-Aguilera then married and her and her husband traveled around the world, spending the majority of their time in Asia – first Hong Kong, then Tokyo, and finally Beijing from 1973 to 1981, where her first two daughters were born. Her marriage ended after eleven years, and García-Aguilera moved to Miami to be closer to her siblings. Since, she has remarried and had another daughter. In Miami, García-Aguilera worked at Jackson Memorial Hospital for a time, before interning with a private investigator (P.I.) company and subsequently becoming licensed herself in 1986; she ran her own successful P.I. business for a decade following this. Eventually, she fulfilled the original intention behind getting the P.I. job, which was to write a series of novels with a female protagonist who is a P.I. The “Lupe Solano” detective series touches upon many themes cradled within Cuban-American life – particularly in South Florida – such as exile, diaspora, feminism, religion, family, and the legacies of the revolution. The series was published in a fourteen-year period as follows: Bloody Waters (1996); Bloody Shame (1997); Bloody Secrets (1998); A Miracle in Paradise (1999); Havana Heat (2000); Bitter Sugar (2001); and Bloody Twist (2010). The collection deeply engages politics and history and, after the first three books, begins to explore varied perspectives of Cuba’s current government in contrast to Lupe’s perspective, who views Cuba as unfree. The series has been well-received, with most critics commenting on the richness with which García-Aguilera captures the Cuban American community.

García-Aguilera’s latest novel, Magnolia, was published in 2012. She currently resides in Miami Beach with her daughters.

Pablo Garí is a screenwriter and comedian performing under the stage name of "El Pible." He was a pioneer of Cuba's "Movimiento del Joven Humor" in the 1980s, and founded the comedy groups "La Leña del Humor" in Santa Clara and "La Seña del Humor de Matanzas." He published the book "El Cartero en Llamas Dos Veces" and has written humorous articles for various Cuban publications. Pible won the Premio Nacional de Literatura Humorística in 1995 for his book "El Conde de Manuscritos."

Living in Santiago de Chile for eight years, Pible worked in television and radio and published five humor books. He has lived in Miami since 2002, where he continues to publish books and performs as a comedian in theaters and nightclubs. He has also been a screenwriter on television programs such as "Seguro que Yes," "Esta Noche Tu Night," and El Show de Alexis Valdés." Pible also has a regular humor segment on the television program "TN-3" on América Tevé.

Dr. Josefina Inclán (b. 1922) was a Cuban writer, scholar and editor. She edited manuscripts by a number of famous Cuban and exile writers, as well as authoring books on the subjects of Cuba and certain Cuban individuals with whom she worked closely, such as Lydia Cabrera, Carmen Conde, and Amelia Peláez. She was an active participant in the Cuban Women's Club in Miami, FL. In 1972, she was presented with a Lincoln-Martí award at a ceremony that took place at the MacAllister Hotel in Miami, Florida.

Select publications include Una carta de Martí (1976); Viajando por la Cuba que fue libre (Ediciones Universal, 1977); and Lydia Cabrera : creación y poesía (Miami, 1981).

Gladys Pérez is a journalist and professor. Born in Cuba in 1947, she worked as a journalist at the Instituto Cubano de Radio y Televisión and was a professor at the Universidad de La Habana and the Centro Internacional de Estudios de Comunicación para América Latina (CIESPASL) in Ecuador. A documentary filmmaker and photographer, she is the author of five books. Pérez has lived in the United States since 1995, where she worked at ZUBI Advertising.

David L. Powell is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and the Columbia Journalism School. He began his professional life as a reporter for the Associated Press in New York, Miami, and Tallahassee. After earning a law degree from Florida State University, he practiced law for thirty years. In his work and through civic organizations he met many Cuban Americans and was moved by the stories of their lives. He began recording interviews about their memories in 2016, which were compiled in the book "Ninety Miles and a Lifetime Away: Memories of Early Cuban Exiles."

Rosario Rexach (1912-2003) was a Cuban exile teacher and author of essays and books on Spanish and Latin American literature and art, particularly that of Cuba. Being of the second generation of Cuban intellectuals of the Republic (1902-1959), Rexach’s research and scholarship focused on foundational literature, that is, her work probed into questions of national identity, often specifically addressing the role of women in the arts and professions. Rexach enjoyed a lengthy publishing career, with her first essay, “Orientación Vocacional de la Mujer en Cuba,” published in the newspaper El Mundo in 1938, and her last monograph, Nuevos estudios sobre Martí, published in 2002 just a year before her death. Other notable works include: El Pensamiento de Varela y la formación de la conciencia cubana (1950); El Carácter de Martí y otros ensayos (1954); Estudios sobre Martí (1985); Dos figuras cubanas y actitud: Estudios sobre Félix Varela y Jorge Mañach (1991); and Estudios sobre Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda (1996). Rexach also penned a novel, Rumbo al punto cierto, in 1979.

As her friend Eduardo Lolo describes, “despite her modest beginning and her status as a woman in a world where women were still second-class citizens,” Rexach acquired a strong academic training at the Normal School for Teachers in Havana and became professionally active in the early 1930s. The graduate assistant and then colleague to national icon and professor at the University of Havana, Jorge Mañach, Rexach was a trailblazer of her time and promoted the professional advancement of women and was involved in innovative pedagogical teaching exercises. As Patricia Pardiñas-Barnes relates in an article that was written using source material contained in this very archive of Rexach’s housed in the Cuban Heritage Collection, Rexach also “belonged to a youthful group who deposed the dictatorship of Machado (1925-30)” (159); this bold commitment to voicing her beliefs would eventually result in her permanent exile from Cuba in 1960. “Taking the school beyond the traditional classrooms would be a constant in Rosario Rexach's efforts in promoting culture,” Lolo writes, her teaching praxis extensively developing at the University of Havana where she was one of the first Cuban women to make use of modern technology in education. Pardiñas-Barnes narrates: “Her voice was heard via CMQ radio waves from 1949 to 1953, where she participated in ‘long-distance learning’ (in today’s pedagogical jargon) at La Universidad del Aire, opening the virtual classroom to as many Cubans as possible to present and discuss national identity concerns and cultural issues. The Universidad del Aire was a cutting-edge educational program created by Jorge Mañach, her mentor and university colleague” (160).

Additionally, Rexach was twice elected President of the prestigious Lyceum de la Habana, “a private non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the culture” (Lolo), and a member of the Comisión Cubana de la UNESCO. By 1960, Rexach left Cuba and relocated permanently to New York City because it was believed she was a counterrevolutionary as Patrick Iber relays: “Another member, the professor of sociology Rosario Rexach, left after a Communist student minder – there was one in every university class – denounced her as a counterrevolutionary because her lectures on the French Revolution credited it with having done much to develop systems of modern education … Rexach said that she could have stayed if she had kept her mouth shut, with a good income of $6,000 a year, an air-conditioned house, and three servants.”

Even when in her seventies and eighties, Rexach was “still publishing with the brió of a much younger generation” (Pardiñas-Barnes 163). But in excess of her scholarly and teacherly vigor and the volume of her published works, Rexach will be remembered for her distinct style and flair of writing, best summarized in the words of a friend who knew her voice in life as well as through the many pages she left behind: “Her essayistic prose is literature, even though literature itself is its content. She talks about the art of others through her own art, as if the waves commented on the sea or the cold the snowfall. Form and content go hand in hand to the bottom of the idea and the soul of the text studied, shaping their own soul and idea as a new literary text … it is the case that Rosario Rexach wrote ‘a la Rexach,’ in a formula that is completed when the receiver enjoys both what he receives and the way he receives it” (Lolo).

Inés Segura Bustamante (1919-2002) was a clinical psychologist, member of Directorio Estudiantil Universitario, writer, painter, composer, and lyricist. Segura Bustamante graduated from the University of Havana with degrees in psychology, philosophy, and letters and worked as a professor of psychology at the University of Havana. As a student in the 1930’s she was politically active and participated in the 1933 Revolution against the Machado government. During the riots that broke out at the University of Havana, she and fellow students Rafael Trejo and Alberto Espinosa were defended by their professor, Dr. Guerra, who later left the university. Later, Segura Bustamante was held at the Isle of Pines prison along with fellow Directorio members Zoila Mulet, Silvia Shelton, and Calixta Guiteras. During her professional career in Havana, she authored many publications such as her 1947 “¿Es la acción voluntaria realmente voluntaria?” in the Revista Cubana de Filosofía de La Habana, which ran from 1946-1958. This article later was published as a monograph in 1948.

She left Cuba after the Revolution of 1959. In exile in Miami in the 1960’s, she was a leading figure in the Directorio Magisterial Revolutionario (DMR), a non-militant anti-Communist organization of professional teachers formed in November of 1960 that worked to produce and distribute anti-Castro informational materials. Segura Bustamante also continued her work as a psychologist and writer in the U.S, where she studied at Columbia University in New York and received her certification from the Florida State Board of Psychology.

She authored several books including El nuevo Gólgota: Cuba y otros temas, a book of Cuban history published in 1996 by Editora Corripio (República Dominicana). She also published another book of Cuban political history, Cuba siglo XX y la generación de 1930: un documento histórico published by Ediciones Universal (Miami) in 1987. In 1989 she published a book about the Directorio Estudiantil called Cuba: pruebas documentales de nuestra historia published by Editora Corripio in Santo Domingo, R.D. Her published works of psychology include Problemas de conducta en los niños: y su repercusion en la edad adulta published by Caribe in 1973 and translated into English by Carlos de Varona and published in 1988 by Editora Corripio as Behavior problems in children and their aftermath in adult age: A book for professionals and non-professionals.

Segura Bustamante studied music and piano and wrote a significant amount of songs. She also studied painting and some of her pictorial works are held in the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami.