Francisco Soto (Ph.D., New York University) is Professor of Spanish and Latin American Literature at the College of Staten Island (City University of New York), where he also has served as Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences since 2002. As Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences he is responsible for overseeing the high academic standards of the division as well as for the faculty and curriculum of its ten departments and seven interdisciplinary programs. Prior to his appointment as dean, he was the coordinator of the International Studies Major and the supervisor of the College of Staten Island’s Spanish Major from 1994 to 2002.

A specialist in Latin American Literature, Soto has published extensively in Spanish and English, both nationally and internationally. His essays, notes, and reviews have appeared in such literary journals as Hispania, Revista Iberoamericana, Inti: Revista de Literatura Hispánica, Crítica Hispánica, Cuban Studies, Confluencia: Revista Hispánica de Cultura y Literatura, Latin American Theater Review, Michigan Quarterly, Chasqui: Revista de literatura latinoamericana, among others. He also has published a number of newspaper articles on major Latin American literary figures in Diario las Américas and El Nuevo Herald.

Soto has also authored three books on the work of noted Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas: Reinaldo Arenas (Twayne’s World Author Series, 1998), Reinaldo Arenas: The Pentagonía (University of Florida Press, 1994), Conversación con Reinaldo Arenas (Madrid: Editorial Betania, 1990). In addition to these three books, he has contributed chapters to six books and has written seven essay entries for encyclopedias of Latin American Literature. In 1991, he was awarded First Prize in the Latin American Writers Institute Translation Awards for "The Humanities Professor," his translation of "El profesor de humanidades" by Puerto Rican writer Julia Ortiz-Griffin.

Soto is currently working on a number of essays on Latino/Latina literature in addition to a collection of essays devoted to Reinaldo Arenas’s lesser known work (poetry, short stories, drama, essays).