Miguel Barnet, is one of Cuba's most distinguished writers and poets as well as a member of the island's National Assembly. He is also the president of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC), an organization with more than 8,000 members. He is an outspoken intellectual, having studied first in the United States and later at the University of Havana. He is best known for his testimonial novel Biography of a Runaway Slave, Biografía de un Cimarrón in Spanish, but he has written dozens of other novels, poems and articles, including a number of stories for Cigar Aficionado. He's been called the Truman Capote of Cuba.
Barnet first came to national attention as the poet of La piedra fina y el pavorreal (1963) and the much-prais
