Robert Arellano

Robert Arellano (born July 12, 1969) is an American writer, musician and educator from Talent, Oregon. His literary production includes pioneering work in electronic publishing, graphic-novel editions for Soft Skull Press/Counterpoint, and five novels published by Akashic Books. His guitar-playing for Bonnie 'Prince' Billy is featured on 'I See a Darkness', which Pitchfork magazine named one of the Top 10 albums of the 1990s, and since the 1980s he has been writing and recording songs for solo projects and his group Havanarama.

Life

Arellano was born in 1969 and raised in Summit, New Jersey. He is a first generation American of Cuban descent. After earning both Bachelor (1991) and Masters (1994) degrees from Brown University, he taught for a decade on Brown's Literary Arts faculty. In 1993 he used Storyspace to publish the Internet's first hyperzine, LSD-50, on a Gopher server. In 1996, Sonicnet serialized his groundbreaking hypertext novel Sunshine ’69 on the World Wide Web. Arellano is a founding member of the Literary Advisory Board of the Electronic Literature Organization and founding director of the Center for Emerging Media and Digital Arts at Southern Oregon University. He has been awarded the Oregon Literary Fellowship in Fiction (2014) and a Rockefeller Foundation Literary Arts Fellowship (2016).

His most recent novel, Havana Libre, about the 1997 terrorist bombings of tourist destinations in Cuba, was published by Akashic Books in 2017. In 2012, Akashic published his novel Curse the Names about a reporter living and working in Los Alamos, New Mexico; and in 2010 his novel Havana Lunar was a finalist for an Edgar Allan Poe Award, nominated by the Mystery Writers of America."He has published fiction and essays in Jane, The Believer, Tin House, and The Village Voice." As Bobby Rabyd, Sunshine 69 (1996) the World Wide Web's first interactive novel, Sunshine 69 Fast Eddie: King of the Bees (2001) As Eddy Arellano, Dead in Desemboque: Historias de Amor y Sangre! (2008) collaboration with artists William Schaff, Richard Schuler, and Alec Thibodeau on a graphic-novel tribute to Mexican comic books Don Dimaio of La Plata (2004), Havana Lunar Nominated for a 2010 Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America, Curse the Names, (2012) Havana Libre, (2017)

Music As Bob Arellano, he has played guitar with Will Oldham (a.k.a. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy) on the albums I See a Darkness, More Revery, and Joya as well as in performance and on recordings with Papa M (David Pajo), Jodie Jean Marston, the Pathetics and Havanarama. In March 2000, Arellano organized an international music exchange in Havana and Pinar del Rio, Cuba called "Rock the Blockade" featuring Cuban performers in concert with Will Oldham, Papa M, Speed to Roam, and Havanarama.