Carlos
Fuentes (1928-2012) was one of the most influential and celebrated
voices in Latin American literature. He was the author of 24 novels,
including Aura, The Death of Artemio Cruz, The Old Gringo and Terra Nostra,
and also wrote numerous plays, short stories, and essays. He received
the 1987 Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's highest literary
honor. Fuentes was born in Panama City, the son of Mexican parents, and
moved to Mexico as a teenager. He served as an ambassador to England and
France, and taught at universities including Harvard, Princeton, Brown
and Columbia.
E. Shaskan Bumas is a the author of the story collection The Prince of Tea in China, a finalist for PEN America West Fiction Book of the Year. He teaches at New Jersey City University.
Alejandro
Branger is a writer and filmmaker. He lives in New York City. He is the
co-translator of Carlos Fuentes's novellas Vlad (Dalkey Archive Press,
2012) and Adam in Eden (Dalkey Archive Press, 2013).
Sandra Cisneros is a poet, short story writer, novelist, essayist, whose work explores the lives of the working-class. Her numerous awards include NEA fellowships in both poetry and fiction, the Texas Medal of the Arts, a MacArthur Fellowship, several honorary doctorates and book awards nationally and internationally, and most recently Chicago’s Fifth Star Award, the PEN Center USA Literary Award and the National Medal of the Arts, awarded to her by President Obama in 2016. The House on Mango Street has sold over five million copies, been translated into over twenty languages. A dual citizen of the U.S. and Mexico, Sandra Cisneros earns her living by her pen.
Carmen Boullosa is one of Mexico's leading novelists, poets, and playwrights. She has published over a dozen novels, several of which have been published by Deep Vellum in English translation. Boullosa has received numerous prizes and honors, including a Guggenheim fellowship. Also a poet, playwright, essayist, and cultural critic, Boullosa is a Distinguished Lecturer at City College of New York, and her books have been translated into Italian, Dutch, German, French, Portuguese, Chinese, and Russian. Other novels translated into English include Before (tr. Peter Bush, Deep Vellum, 2016), Heavens On Earth (tr. Shelby Vincent, Deep Vellum, 2017), The Book of Anna (tr. Samantha Schnee, Coffee House Press, 2020) and The Book of Eve (tr. Samantha Schnee, Deep Vellum, 2023).
Samantha Schnee is the founding editor of Words Without Borders. Her translation of Boullosa's Texas: The Great Theft was shortlisted for the PEN America Translation Prize. She lives in Houston, Texas.
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648/51-1695), a Mexican nun, was a brilliant poet, playwright, and essayist whose persistent defense of the intellectual rights of women brought her increasingly into conflict with church officials, who repeated tried to silence her. Sor Juana died by taking care her sister nuns during a plague in April 1695.
Electa Arenal, professor emerita of Hispanic and Women's Studies (City University of New York), is a translator and specialist in Hispanic monastic women's culture. Listed in Feminists Who Changed America, Arenal's fourth co-authored book, an illustrated, critical edition of Sor Juana's Neptuno alegórico, was published by Editorial Cátedra, in Spain.
Amanda Powell, award-winning poet and translator, teaches Latin American and Spanish literature and literary translation at the University of Oregon. Powell has published essays on: 16th- and 17th-century Spanish and Colonial Latin American women writers; convent writings; Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz; the "boom" in women's love poetry across 17th century Europe; and literary translation.
