About the Author
Belo Miguel Cipriani was born in Guatemala City to parents of Italian and Brazilian heritage and is fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. Before evolving into a fulltime writer, he worked as a bartender, a systems engineer, and a technical recruiter. His first book, Blind: A Memoir (2011), received a blurb from Amy Tan and has been profiled in the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, San Jose Mercury News, Huffington Post, Advocate Magazine, After Elton, Univision, and Chicago Windy City Times, among others. It received an honorable mention for “best debut novel/book” and “best non-fiction” by the Rainbow Awards (2011), was awarded an honorable mention by the Eric Hoffer Book Awards (2012), and is a finalist for the First Horizon Award (2012).
Amber Clovers, Cipriani’s first work of fiction, will be published by ASD Publishing in 2013. Additionally, he was the keynote speaker for the 2011 Americans with Disabilities Act celebration in San Francisco and for the 2012 queer conference at Skyline College, CA. He was also invited to be a guest lecturer at both Yale University and the University of San Francisco.
His other work has been published in The Bohemian, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Wired Latinos, Dot429, The Lighthouse, and InsidePride. He was awarded a fellowship in nonfiction by the Lambda Literary Foundation (2011), a writing fellowship at Yaddo (2012), and a writing residency at Holy Names University, Oakland CA.
Cipriani says, “Educating our population on disability issues will produce awakened generations.”
