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.