The Puerto Rican Literature Project

Francisco Arriví was born  in 1915 in the barrio of Santurce in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He obtained his BA in education with a concentration in Spanish from the University of Puerto Rico. Arriví taught at different institutions such as the Ponce High School—where he founded the student drama club, the Tinglado Puertorriqueño—and the Departamento de Instrucción Pública’s (currently known as the Departamento de Educación) Escuela del Aire. In 1949, he received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to study a Master’s in Radio and Theater at Columbia University in New York. Upon returning to Puerto Rico, he served as the programming director for WIPR, the governmental radio station. Arriví helped design the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture (ICP), which was established in 1956, and served as the director of its Theater Program for twenty years. He’s the author of the trilogy of plays, Máscara puertorriqueña, which includes the plays: Bolero y plena (Editorial Cultural, 1971), Vejigantes (Editorial Cultural, 1973)—which was presented at the first Puerto Rican Theater Festival and received an award from the Institute of Literature—and Sirena (Editorial Cultural, 1971), which was dramatized by the Experimental Theater of the Ateneo Puertorriqueño. He also wrote, Club de solteros (1940), Alumbramiento (1945), María Soledad (1947), among others. Arriví is the author of the poetry collections, Isla y Nada (Imprenta Soltero, 1958), Frontera (Rumbos, 1960)—which won an award from the Institute of Puerto Rican Literature—Ciclo de lo ausente (1962), Escultor de la sombra (1965), En la tenue geografía (1971), and Ceiba, areyto, cemí, coquí (Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 1980). The Puerto Rican Endowment of the Humanities awarded Arriví “Humanist of the Year” in 1982. Arriví died on February 8, 2007 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. 

Works Cited

Arriví, Francisco. Alumbramiento. Produced by Tinglado Puertorriqueño, 1945.

Arriví, Francisco. Ciclo de lo ausente. Pareja, 1 January 1965.

Arriví, Francisco. Club de solteros (Una guiñolada en tres espantos). Editorial Tinglado Puertorriqueño, 1962. First produced in 1940.

Arriví, Francisco. En la tenue geografía. Pareja, 1971.

Arriví, Francisco. María Soledad. Produced by Tinglado Puertorriqueño, 1947.

“Francisco Arriví.” Edited by Salva García y Nina Delgado, El poder de la palabra, 2023, www.epdlp.com/escritor.php?id=11345.

“Francisco Arriví.” Theater Biographies, Encyclopedia of Puerto Rico, Puerto Rican Endowment for the Humanities, 20 May 2021, en.enciclopediapr.org/content/francisco-arrivi/.

Martínez, Luis. “FRANCISCO ARRIVI, EN LA TENUE GEOGRAFIA, poemario, San Juan de Puerto Rico, 1971, 237 pp.”. Ceiba, vol. 1, no. 1, 1973, pp. 101-4. Revistas, Universidad de Puerto Rico, revistas.upr.edu/index.php/ceiba/article/view/3236.