Pablo Neruda is regarded as the greatest Latin American poet of the 20th century. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971, his breadth of vision and wide range of themes are extraordinary, and his work continues to inspire new generations of writers.
Jessica Powell has translated numerous Latin American authors, including works by César Vallejo, Jorge Luis Borges, Ernesto Cardenal, Maria Moreno, Ana Lidia Vega Serova and Edmundo Paz Soldán. Her translation (with Suzanne Jill Levine) of Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo's novel Where There's Love, There's Hate, was published by Melville House in 2013. She was the recipient of a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship in support of her translation of Antonio Benítez Rojo's novel Woman in Battle Dress (City Lights, 2015), which was a finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Translation. Her translation of Wicked Weeds by Pedro Cabiya was named a finalist for the 2017 Best Translated Book Award.
Mark Eisner conceived, edited, and was one of the principal translators for The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems (City Lights, 2004). For Neruda's centennial that year, Eisner was interviewed by Renee Montaigne on NPR's Morning Edition. Eisner has also written what the bestselling novelist Cristina García called a "definitive" biography on Neruda, Neruda: The Poet's Calling, one that "reads like a beautifully written novel," forthcoming from a major publisher in March 2018. Finally, he is currently producing a documentary on Neruda, to be completed in 2018, with support from Latino Public Broadcasting. An initial, short version of the documentary, narrated by Isabel Allende, won the Latin American Studies Association Award of Merit. Other work includes his critically acclaimed translation of the Spanish poet and scholar Tina Escaja's award-winning book-length poem Free Fall / Caída Libre (Fomite Press, 2015.) He was also involved with the founding of the literary non-profit Red Poppy Art House in San Francisco. He and Escaja also co-edited a forthcoming multilingual anthology of Latin American Poetry in Resistance, a project of Red Poppy, dedicated to promoting the power of Latin American poetry to evoke social consciousness.
