Orlando Ferrand is a Cuban-American writer, poet, and visual artist. He was born in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, and moved to New York City in his late teens. He was recently featured by TED, The New York Poetry Festival, and received the 2017 SU-CASA fellowship from the Bronx Council on the Arts and the New York Department of Cultural Affairs, the 2015 Artist in Community Grant, the 2014 BRIO Award for Excellence in Poetry, and the 2011 Artist Summer Institute fellowship from LMCC. His memoir, Apologia: Cuban Childhood in My Backpack, received a 5-star rating by Readers' Favorite in 2012 and was selected as the Book-of-the-Semester by Hostos Community College, CUNY, in the spring of 2012. Ferrand's collection of poetry, Citywalker, won the Gold Medal in the Readers' Favorite Book Review and Award Contest in 2011. He also won the Linden Lane Press Poetry Prize in 2011 for his book La Otra Isla (Spanish Edition). Ferrand is a contributing writer and visual artist to PEN America Blog, Visual AIDS Blog, POZ Magazine Blog, Linden Lane Magazine, and The Adroit Journal. In addition, he writes for his own blogs, Dancing with Muses, and Pandora's Box is Open. He's contributed to the anthologies, La Pluma Y La Tinta New Voices, The Bronx Memoir Project I, and The Best of Panic. Ferrand has given poetry recitals at the prestigious Whitney Museum of American Art, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Jacob Javits Convention Center, Alice Austen House, Pratt Institute Memorial Hall, and the Miller Theater. His prose has been showcased at the Sunday Salon, The Miss Manhattan Reading Series, and the Jasper Collective & Lost Lit "Visitations" Literary Reading. Ferrand's work as a visual artist has been showcased at The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Leslie/Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, Luhring Augustine, Jenkins & Co., and Cheim & Read in New York City. A graduate of City College, Parsons, and Columbia University, he also teaches visual arts and creative writing at numerous colleges and cultural institutions.