Fernando Rivas Martinez is a Cuban-born award-winning writer and music composer. He graduated from the Juilliard School in New York and has won two Emmys and one Grammy for his television music work for the Disney Channel and the Children’s Television Workshop. He was also the recipient of the Richard Rodgers Musical Theater award in 1998. While incarcerated, he has continued to write and compose, and has received awards from PEN America and American Short Fiction (The Insider’s Prize). His poetry and essays have appeared on the Minutes Before Six and the Evening Street Press websites, as well as in several journals and magazines for prison writing. He has also written for the Prison Journalism Project and the Marshall Project.
2025 PEN America Prison Writing Contest — Honorable Mention in Drama for “Low Life: A Musical”
2022 PEN America Prison Writing Contest – 3rd Place in Poetry for “Inquiry“
2016 PEN America Prison Writing Contest – Honorable Mention in Poetry for “300 Min.”
