Reinaldo Arenas

Reinaldo Arenas's accolades are modest in number but heavy in meaning. He won a Cuban national literary prize in 1967 for his debut novel, Celestino antes del alba, a recognition that almost immediately turned into a liability as official suspicion of his style and sexuality grew. His true honors came after his death: a 2012 induction into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame, inclusion of Before Night Falls in university curricula on Cuban dissidence and exile, and the 2000 film adaptation that earned Javier Bardem an Academy Award nomination. No major international literary prize came his way in his lifetime, yet his influence on Cuban and LGBTQ literature is widely acknowledged.