Marcelo Morales (b. Cuba, 1977) began to write at the end of the "Special Period," a euphemistic phrase referring to a time of economic, political, and social crisis in Cuba resulting from the collapse of the socialist field. In his poetry, Morales sifts through historical, political, economic, and material conditions that shape human experience. El mecanismo mudo, his extended collection of new prose poetry of which The Star-Spangled Brand is one segment, is forthcoming from Varasek Ediciones in Madrid. Morales is also the author of The World as Presence / El mundo como ser, a bilingual poetry edition from the U. of Alabama Press (2016, longlisted for the National Translation Award). His previous books of prose poetry include El círculo mágico, El mundo como objeto, Cinema and Materia, among others; his novel, La espiral, appeared in 2006. He lives in Havana.

BOMB published a 2017 interview in which Morales discusses writing, as well as his own photographs (https://bombmagazine.org/articles/marcelo-morales/). Morales occupies a historically interesting moment in Cuban literature. The crisis of the Special Period affected the publishing world in the 1990s with supply shortages. When Morales's first book appeared, it coincided with the publication of the first books by authors of the next generation. Consequently, some critics place Morales as one of the last authors of the 1990s, while others believe that Morales is best situated at the vanguard of "Generation Zero," a designation for Cuban writers first publishing after 2000.