Pérez Firmat is the author of many books and essays on literature, philosophy, and culture.
His poems, translations, critical and personal essays have appeared in many magazines, journals and anthologies.
Next Year in Cuba, a memoir, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in non-fiction in 1995.
Pérez Firmat is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been the recipient of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Mellon Foundation.
In 2004 he was named one of New York’s thirty “outstanding Latinos” by El Diario La Prensa.