Pablo Antonio Cuadra(November 4, 1912 – January 2, 2002) was a Nicaraguan essayist, art and literary critic, playwright, graphic artist and one of the most famous poets of Nicaragua. In 1931 along with José Coronel Urtecho, Joaquín Pasos, and other writers, he founded the Vanguardia literary movement in Granada.

Cuadra's Poemas nicaragüenses was published in 1934. He opposed the American intervention against Augusto César Sandino in the 1930s and broke with the Somoza dynasty in the 1940s. In 1954 he became co-director of La Prensa newspaper alongside his cousin and partner, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Cardenal. Chamorro was assassinated by Somoza supporters in 1978. Cuadra was briefly jailed in 1956 for his opposition to the Somoza's régime. In 1961 he became editor of the influential journal El Pez y La Serpiente (The Fish and the Serpent), which was highly influential in Latin America.

Cuadra became an outspoken advocate for Nicaragua's poor, embracing liberation theology and other intellectual currents which the Somoza government considered subversive. He later criticised the post-1979 Sandinista National Liberation Front régime for stifling the independence of Nicaragua's culture. For several years thereafter, he lived in self-imposed exile in Costa Rica and Texas.

In 1995 Cuadra was honoured with an honorary doctorate degree by Universidad Francisco Marroquín. His many literary honours, included the Gabriela Mistral Inter-American Cultural Prize, awarded by the Organization of American States in 1991.

[Text adapted from Wikipedia.]