Jaime Manrique

Jaime Manrique (born 16 June 1949) is a bilingual Colombian American novelist, poet, essayist, educator, and translator.

Manrique was born in Barranquilla, Colombia. He lived his childhood between the city of his birth and Bogotá. In 1966, he emigrated with his mother to Lakeland, Florida. He received a B.A. in English literature at the University of South Florida in 1972.

In 1974, Manrique met Pauline Kael, The New Yorker’s film critic, with whom he began a friendship that lasted until her death in 2001. His book Notas de Cine: Confesiones de un Crítico Amateur (1979), is dedicated to Kael.

In 1977, Manrique received permission from the Argentine novelist Manuel Puig to join a workshop that Puig taught at Columbia University. Manrique was working on El cadáver de papá (1980). Puig encouraged him to continue writing fiction when he said that he liked his writing because “it came from under the epidermis." They became friends after that. Manrique described their friendship in The Writer As Diva, an essay included in Eminent Maricones.

Also in 1977, Manrique met the American painter Bill Sullivan. The couple lived between Colombia and Venezuela until the end of 1979. Until Sullivan’s death in 2010, they remained partners.

Jaime Manrique began his career as university professor in the USA in 1987 at the Eugene Lang College of The New School for Social Research (The New School). His career as educator continues to this day.

His first poetry volume Los Adoradores de la Luna, won Colombia's National Poetry Award in 1975. His first novel published in English was Colombian Gold in 1983. In 1992 he published Latin Moon in Manhattan. About this novel James Dao wrote in The New York Times: "A picaresque tale about a gay Colombian immigrant's adventures among hookers, self-made millionaires, narcotics traffickers and elderly book mavens..." and also stated that "the novel is hardly intended to portray the "typical" immigrant experience."

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