28. Chantel Acevedo: Spotlight on Cuba

Chantel Acevedo has “written the impossible: an Odyssey for the Cuban 20th century” (Junot Diaz). Born in Miami to Cuban parents, Acevedo is the award-winning author of multiple books; Cages is her most personal and heartfelt yet. Over a thirty-year arc, Cages follows a man named Felix—a zookeeper in Cuba during the missile crisis, an exile in swinging sixties London, and finally, a dying man in 1980s AIDS-era Miami. The result is a dazzling mosaic of longing, deception, survival, and reconciliation, as well as a searing portrait of a gay man living in Fidel Castro’s Cuba, where homosexuality was branded “counterrevolutionary.” Acevedo shares her illuminating book in conversation with Maria Reva.

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Chantel Acevedo

CHANTEL ACEVEDO, described as "a master storyteller" by Kirkus Reviews, is the author of the novels Love and Ghost Letters, A Falling Star, The Distant Marvels, The Living Infinite; and latest novel is Cages. Acevedo's middle grade books have been listed on several state educator and librarian lists. Acevedo is a Professor of English & Creative Writing at the University of Miami.

Maria Reva

MARIA REVA writes fiction and opera libretti. She is the author of Good Citizens Need Not Fear, set in an apartment block in Ukraine, as well as the novel Endling (longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, winner of the Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize). Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, McSweeney’s, The Wall Street Journal, The Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. Maria’s opera libretti have been commissioned by organizations including City Opera Vancouver, Memorial University of Newfoundland’s Opera Roadshow, Ad Astra Music Festival (Russell, Kansas), Musique 3 Femmes, and most recently, Opéra de Montréal.