About the Authors and Translator

Born Francisco de Asís León Bogislao de Greiff (Colombia, 1895-1976), León de Greiff introduced his country to the literary movement known as Modernismo, which renewed Latin American poetry between 1885 and 19915. Toward the end of his life Greiff divided his oeuvre into eight mamotretos, including Fárrago (1954), Bárbara Charanga (1957), and Nova et vetera (1973). His Obra completa, edited by Hjalmar de Greiff, began appearing in 1985.

Arguably the most influential Latin American poet ever, Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina, 1899-1986) wrote essays, fiction, and poetry. He was also a distinguished conversateur. His work has been translated into English numerous times. A passionate reader, he was close to Victoria Ocampo's magazine Sur and was named director of Argentina's Biblioteca Nacional. Blindness defined his later career. To commemorate the centennial of his birth, Viking published three omnibus volumes in the United States: Collected Fictions (1999), translated by Andrew Hurley, Selected Non-Fiction (1999), edited by Eliot Weinberger, and Selected Poems (2000), edited by Alexander Coleman.

Dulce María Loynáz (Cuba, 1902-1997) was awarded the Premio Cervantes in 1992. The most representative sample of her work in English appears in A Woman in Her Garden (2002), translated by Judith Kerman, and Against Heaven (2007), translated by James O'Connor.

Darío Jaramillo Agudelo (Colombia, 1947-) is the author of, among other books, Historias (1974), Poemas de amor (1986), Del ojo a la lengua (1995), and Cantar por cantar (2001). An anthology of his work, Libros de poemas, appeared in 2003.

Santiago Mutis Durán (Colombia, 1951-) is the author of, among other books, Tú también eres de lluvia (1982) and Afuera pasa el siglo (1999). He edited an anthology of José Asunción Silva, whose oeuvre belonged to the Modernista trend.

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Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. His books include The Hispanic Condition (1995), On Borrowed Words (2001), Spanglish (2003), and Love and Language (2007). He is the editor of The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories (1998), The Poetry of Pablo Neruda (2003), the 3-volume set of Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories (2004), and, to be released this October by the Library of America, Becoming Americans: Four Hundred Years of Immigrant Writing. The translations in this chapbook are part of a forthcoming anthology of 20th-century Latin American poetry he edited for Farrar, Straus and Giroux.