Rafael Peñas Cruz

Rafael Peñas Cruz (born March 1, 1964 in Spain) has been a novelist since 2004.

He was born in Pozoblanco in Cordoba in Spain. His parents moved to Barcelona when he was young, and he graduated in English Literature from the city's university, before coming to London to study in summer 1989, and live from 1992 onwards.

There, in a relationship with the film maker Constantine Giannaris he acted in the films "Jean Genet is Dead" (1989) and "Trojans" (1990) credited as Rafael Peñas.

After completing an MA in Hispanic studies at Birbeck University of London, he worked at schools and colleges teaching Spanish and Hispanic culture. At the Blackheath Bluecoat Church of England School he taught Rio Ferdinand who went on to achieve a noted career in football, and later at the City of London School a young Daniel Radcliffe who was already enjoying prominence in the title role of the Harry Potter films. Cruz started work at the London School of Economics in 2000 in the Language Centre.

He married in London in 2004, the year his first novel, Las Dimensiones del Teatro (The Dimensions of the Theatre) was published under the name Rafael Peñas. But it was his second novel Charlie, published in 2010, that gained him international attention, after he won the Terenci Moix Prize for Lesbian and Gay fiction. The story was loosely based on a young student of Cruz's, Charlie Aldridge, from his days as a schoolmaster at the City of London School in the capital.

He is now working on his third novel, with the working title Celia's Legacy which is due for publication in 2017, and an autobiographical chronicle provisionally entitled Up and Out in Barcelona and London.