Andrei Codrescu & Victor Hernández Cruz
Andrei Codrescu
Andrei Codrescu (http://www.codrescu.com/) is the author of poetry, fiction, and essays. He is the founder of Exquisite Corpse: A Journal of Life & Letters (1983-2016) http://www.corpse.org/. His book, So Recently Rent a World: New & Selected Poems, 1968-2012, was a National Book Award nominee. Codrescu has been a commentator on NPR’s All Things Considered since 1983, has received a Peabody award for his film Road Scholar, and the Ovidius Prize in poetry. He has reported for NPR and ABC News from Romania and Cuba. Codrescu is Disinguished Professor Emeritus at Louisiana State University. He lives in New Orleans, the Ozarks, and New York.
Victor Hernández Cruz
Victor Hernández Cruz was born in Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico and began writing as a teenager in New York City. Cruz completed his first collection of verses, Papo Got His Gun, and Other Poems (1966), in his teens and published Snaps (Random House) at age 20. He is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including Beneath the Spanish (Coffee House Press, 2017); In the Shadow of Al-Andalus (Coffee House Press, 2011); The Mountain in the Sea (Coffee House Press, 2006); and Maraca: New and Selected Poems 1965-2000 (Coffee House Press, 2001), which was selected for the shortlist of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and the International Griffin Poetry Prize. Cruz’s poetry has been translated into French, Greek, Dutch, Chinese, Russian, Catalan, Japanese, and Swiss, and he has read his work in Colombia, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Jordan, France, the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, Spain, and Morocco.
Cruz is the recipient of numerous awards including a Fulbright Scholarship, the Guggenheim Fellowship and the New York Poetry Foundation Award. Cruz divides his time between Morocco and Puerto Rico.