Homero Aridjis, one of Latin America’s foremost literary figures and environmental activists, was born in Contepec, Michoacan. Many of his forty-five books of poetry and prose have been translated into fifteen languages, and his writing has been recognized with important literary prizes in Mexico, Italy, France, the United States, and Serbia.
Formerly Mexican Ambassador to Switzerland, The Netherlands, and, most recently, UNESC , for six years he was international president of PEN International and is now president emeritus. As founder (in 1985) and president of the Group of 100, an environmentalist association of writers, artists, and scientists, he has received awards from the United Nations (Global 500 Award), the Orion Society, Mikhail Gorbachev and Global Green USA and the Natural Resources Defense Council. He has been a visiting professor at Indiana, New York, and Columbia universities and the University of California, (Irvine). His most recent books are the novel Esmirna en llamas (Fondo de Cultura Economica), Noticias de la Tierra, (with Betty Ferber), a collection of his writings and pioneering work on the environment (Random House Mondadori), Tiempo de ángeles/A Time of Angels (Fondo de Cultura Económica and City Lights) and Del cielo y sus maravillas, de la tierra y sus miserias (Fondo de Cultura Económica). Eyes to See Otherwise (New Directions), Solar Poems (City Lights) and 1492 The Life and Times of Juan Cabezon of Castile (University of New Mexico Press) are among other books available in English.