Lêdo Ivo was bom in 1924 in Maceio, Alagoas. He studied in Recife, and at the age of nineteen moved to Rio de Janeiro. In addition to writing poems and novels, he worked as a journalist. In 1986, he was elected to the Academia Brasileira de Letras. He was a close friend to Manuel Bandeira and José Lins do Rego and was influenced by Arthur Rimbaud. He is an important member of the anti-modernist “Generation of 1945.” The critic Fausto Cunha has said that he is “One of the few who will endure.”
translator
Alexis Levitin’s forty-one books of translation include Clarice Lispector’s Soulstorm and Eugenio de Andrade’s Forbidden Words, both from New Directions. Recent books include Salgado Maranhão’s Blood of the Sun (Milkweed Editions, 2012), Eugenio de Andrade’s The Art of Patience (Red Dragonfly Press, 2013), Ana Minga’s Tobacco Dogs (The Bitter Oleander Press, 2013), Santiago Vizcaino’s Destruction in the Afternoon (Diálogos Books, 2015), Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen’s Exemplary Tales (Tagus Press, 2015), Salgado Maranhão’s Tiger Fur (White Pine Press, 2015), and Rosa Alice Branco’s Cattle of the Lord (Milkweed Editions, 2016). In 2012, Levitin and Maranhão completed a three-month reading tour of the US, visiting over fifty colleges and other institutions. In spring 2016, they read from Blood of the Sun and Tiger Fur in the Northeast, the Midwest, and the West Coast. In fall 2017, they did a mini-tour of the Northeast. During their three national tours. they have presented Maranhão’s poetry at over eighty colleges and universities. Levitin has received two NEA translation grants, has been a fellow at the Baanf summer translation retreat, the Europaischer Ubersetzer Collegium in Straelen, Germany, and at the Rockefeller Study Center in Bellagio, Italy. He has taught translation at the Universidad Catolica de Guayaquil, Ecuador, and the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Florianopolis, Brazil.
winter 2018 