The author

Roberto Joaquin Perez-Franco was born on April 26, 1976, in Chitré, Panama. He grew up in the neighboring Heroica Villa de Los Santos, which named him a Meritorious Son in 1999. His main artistic contribution has been in literature, especially the short story.

A writer since adolescence, he published five short-story collections between 1993 and 2008, which have earned various honors, including the José María Sánchez National Short Story Award in 2005. Vivo, the Esperanto translation of his story Vida, was named Children’s Book of the Year 2025 in the Fine Arts Competitions of the Universal Esperanto Association. His work appears in many anthologies and literary magazines, in Panama and abroad. Besides the short story, he writes verse and short essay.

He studied at the José Daniel Crespo High School, which later created a Readers’ Circle in his name. In 2001 he completed a degree in Electromechanical Engineering at the Technological University of Panama, as Valedictorian. On a Fulbright scholarship, he completed a master’s degree in 2004 at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he later earned a doctorate in 2010, and where he worked as a researcher and lecturer until 2017.

Versatile and restless, he has presented ideas and works in fields as diverse as the symbolic simulation of circuits, pre-Columbian lunar calendars, and the folk dances of Corpus Christi. His passions include literature, painting, music, chess, kayaking, and Esperanto. After twelve years in Boston, he moved to Melbourne, Australia, in 2017, where he lives with his wife, Mónica, and his son, Eddie.