Victor Andres Triay

Victor Andres Triay, Ph.D., was born and raised in Miami, Florida. His parents left Cuba for United States exile in 1960, six years before his birth. Triay is a 1984 graduate of Christopher Columbus High School in Miami. He attended Miami-Dade Community College and in 1988 received his BA in history from the University of Florida in Gainesville. He subsequently attended Florida State University in Tallahassee where he earned both his MA (1991) and Ph.D. (1995) in history. He has been a history professor at Middlesex Community College in Middletown, Connecticut, since 1992. Triay's first historical work, "Fleeing Castro: Operation Pedro Pan and the Cuban Children's Program" (U Press of Florida, 1998), was the first book to explore Operation Pedro Pan, the early 1960s program that brought over 14,000 Cuban children to the United States as unaccompanied refugees, and the program designed to care for them. His second book, "Bay of Pigs: An Oral History of Brigade 2506 (U Press of Florida, 2001)," was the recipient of the 2001 Samuel Proctor Oral History Prize and was later published in Spanish translation by Random House under the title, "La Patria nos Espera." In 2013, Triay entered the world of historical fiction with his three-book saga, "The Unbroken Circle." Book I, "The Struggle Begins," was released in July, 2013; Book II, "Freedom Betrayed," in early 2014; and Book III, "On Freedom's Shores," in November 2014. All the books in the series were highly acclaimed by readers. In 2016 and 2017, Triay conducted the largest oral history project ever on the Bay of Pigs invasion, interviewing more than 100 members of Brigade 2506, for Florida International University's Cuban Research Institute. In September 2019, Triay released his long-awaited book about the Mariel Boatlift, "The Mariel Boatlift: A Cuban American Journey." The book received a Gold Medal from the Florida Book Awards (2019, non-fiction category) and an Honorable Mention for the American Association for State and Local History's "Leadership in History" Award.