IIan Stavans
New York Times bestselling author, cultural commentator, linguist, and translator.
Fields of expertise:
An international renown New York Times bestselling cultural commentator, linguist, historian, poet, children's book author, and translator, Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities, Latin American, and Latino Culture at Amherst College, the publisher of Restless Books, and a consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary. An immigrant from Mexico, his work, translated into more than twenty languages, has been adapted into film, TV, radio, and theater. Famous for his research on Spanglish and his explorations of Jewish and Latino cultures, he is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Chile's Presidential Medal, the Jewish Book Award, the International Latino Book Award, and others.
His TED lessons have been watched by more than seven million viewers. His work appears in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, Time, The Nation, NPR and PBS. His books include On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language, The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, Latino USA: A Cartoon History, How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish, A Nation Wrestles with God: American Prophets, Philosophers, and Firebrands. He has translated into English the poetry of Pablo Neruda, the Mayan book of origins Popol Vuh, and the Nahuatl poems of Nezahualcoyotl, among others.
