Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, born 27 January 1950 in Matanzas, Cuba, is a Cuban novelist.
He grew up in Pinar del Río and began to work selling ice cream and newspapers when he was eleven years old. He was a soldier, swimming and kayak instructor, agricultural worker, technician in construction, technical designer, radio speaker, and journalist for 26 years. He is a painter and sculptor and an author of several poetry books.
He came to central Havana when he was 37 and was astonished by the level of violence but also by the energy of the people who lived there.
He is the author of Dirty Havana Trilogy, King of Havana, Tropical Animal (winner of Spain's Alfonso Garcia Ramos Prize in 2000), The Insatiable Spiderman, Dog Meat (winner of Italy's Narrativa Sur del Mundo Prize), Snake's Nest (winner of the Prix des Amériques Insulaires et de la Guyane in 2008), Our GG in Havana, and the short stories of Melancholy of Lions. Dirty Havana Trilogy, Tropical Animal and The Insatiable Spiderman have been translated to English. Since 1994, he has written ten prose books and five books of poetry. In 2007, he published Corazón Mestizo, a Cuban travel book.