Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

PhD student in Comparative Literature; track for international writers
    research interests:
    • Revolution
    • Utopia
    • Cuba
    • Cuban Literature
    • Latin America
    • Communism
    • Exile
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      contact info:

      mailing address:

      • MSC 1107-146-100
      • Washington University
      • One Brookings Drive
      • St. Louis, MO 63130-4899
      image of book cover

      Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo is a Cuban writer from Havana.

      He graduated from Havana University in 1994 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry. He published four short-story books in Cuba: "Collage Karaoke," "Empezar de cero," "Ipatrías," and "Mi nombre es William Saroyan." Elsewhere, Orlando has published the digital photo-book "Abandoned Havana" (Restless Books, New York, 2014), the book of narrative "Boring Home" (El Nacional, Venezuela, 2014), the anthology "Cuba in Splinters" (O/R Books, New York, 2014), and the compilations of his fictionalized chronicles "Del clarín escuchad el silencio" (Hypermedia, 2016) and "Espantado de todo me refugio en Trump" (Hypermedia, 2019).

      Selected Publications:

      Book of journalistic chronicles DEL CLARÍN ESCUCHAD EL SILENCIO (Hypermedia, 2016):

      Article about US embargo to Cuba

      Article about Havana

      Article about Cuban exiles

      Article about Fidel Castro

      Interview for ICORN

      Interview for Words Without Borders

      Interview for PEN

      Columns at Sampsonia Way Magazine

      Columns at PanAm Post

      Article in Smithsonian Magazine online

      Article about Ernesto Che Guevara in Bookwity

      Short Story in Litro Magazine, London, UK

      Short Story in Iowa Literaria Magazine

      Short Story in Spanish, Cronopio Magazine

      Essay included in the academic book Digital Humanities

      Article in Human Geography

      Abandoned Havana

      Abandoned Havana

      By Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

      Dissident Cuban writer, photographer, and pioneering blogger Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo presents a collection of surreal, irony-laden photos and texts from his native city. His “diary of dystopia”—an unexpected fusion of images and words—brings us closer to Havana’s scaffolded and crumbling facades, ramshackle waterfronts, and teeming human bodies. In this book, as beautiful and bleak as Havana itself, Pardo guides us through the relics and fables of an exhausted Revolution in the waning days of Castro’s Cuba.

      Cuba in Splinters: Eleven Stories from the New Cuba

      Cuba in Splinters: Eleven Stories from the New Cuba

      Edited By Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

      Rock 'n' roll, zombies, drugs, anomie and angst: these are generally not the first things that come to mind when Americans imagine Cuba. In Cuba in Splinters, a sparkling package of stories we're assured are fictional, however, that's exactly what you'll find. Eleven writers who are largely unknown outside Cuba depict a world that veers from a hyperreal Havana in decay against a backdrop of oblivious drug-toting German tourists, to a fantasy land where vigilant Cubans bar the door to zombies masquerading as health inspectors. Sex and knife-fights, stutterers and addicts, losers and lost literary classics welcome readers to a raw and genuine island universe that is generally closed to casual visitors.

      Cuba in Splinters was compiled by Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, a graduate student in Comparative Literature’s track for international writers, and published by OR Books in 2014.