Marcílio França Castro was born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil in 1967. His first book A casa dos outros (7Letras, 2009) won the Brazilian Union of Writers Award in 2010. In 2009 he was also the recipient of the Funarte de Criação Literária Grant, which he used to write and publish his second short story collection Breve cartografia de lugares sem nenhum interesse (7Letras, 2011). This book would go on to win Brazil’s Clarice Lispector Award from the National Library Foundation in 2012. Castro is the author of a new book of short stories titled Histórias naturais (Companhia das Letras, 2016). For this book, he was invited to present as a keynote speaker at Brazil’s largest international literary festival FLIP (Festa Literária Internacional de Paraty) in 2016. Histórias naturais is also currently nominated for the Rio de Literatura award and again for the National Library Award. Castro earned his master’s degree in literary studies at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), where he also received a law degree.

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translator

Heath Wing received a PhD in Spanish with a Portuguese Minor from Texas Tech University in 2015. He is currently an assistant professor of Spanish at North Dakota State University. He teaches courses in Latin American civilization and culture, Latin American literature, Spanish American women writers, and Chicano literature. Aside from his research, Wing translates poetry and prose for contemporary Latin American writers. He has published poetry and prose translations from both Spanish and Portuguese in Shadowgraph and Fishouse Poems, as well as in Hinchas de Poesía. His most recent translations appear in Waxwing, Asymptote, and Brooklyn Rail’s InTranslation series. He currently has a translation nominated for a Pushcart.