Richard Farina

Richard Fariña, poet, novelist, composer, folksinger, was born of a Cuban father and an Irish mother, and lived with them, at various times, in Brooklyn, Cuba, and Northern Ireland. At eighteen he became associated with the Irish Republican Army, an experience on which he based his story "An End to a Young Man." He also visited Cuba several times, first while Fidel Castro was still in the mountains, and later when the revolutionary army was entering Havana. He attended Cornell University,...See more

Richard Fariña, poet, novelist, composer, folksinger, was born of a Cuban father and an Irish mother, and lived with them, at various times, in Brooklyn, Cuba, and Northern Ireland. At eighteen he became associated with the Irish Republican Army, an experience on which he based his story "An End to a Young Man." He also visited Cuba several times, first while Fidel Castro was still in the mountains, and later when the revolutionary army was entering Havana. He attended Cornell University, leaving in 1959 to live in London and Paris. It was in Paris that work on his widely acclaimed first novel, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, was begun.It was also in France that he met Mimi Baez; in 1963 they were married and returned to California to live. The couple won stunning notices for their performances at the Newport Folk Festival, and their two Vanguard albums Celebration for a Gray Day and Reflections in a Crystal Wind were also spectacularly successful, the former being selected by The New York Times as one of the ten best folk records of 1965.Two days after the publication of Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, Richard Fariña was killed in a motorcycle accident near Carmel, California. See less