Manuel Martínez Maldonado is a Puerto Rican poet, essayist, fiction writer and film critic. His first novel Isla Verde o el Chevy azul was published in 1999. His novel El imperialista ausente (2014) won the Premio de Novela del Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña in 2013. His other publications include the novels El vuelo del dragón (2012), Del color de la muerte (2014) and the poetry collections Sostenida (1984), Palm Beach Blues (1985), Por Amor al Arte (1989), Hotel María (1999), Novela de Mediodía (2003), and Breve es el amor (2019).