José Antonio Mazzotti

José Antonio Mazzotti (1961-2024) was a Peruvian poet, scholar, and literary activist. He was Professor of Latin American Literature and King Felipe VI of Spain Professor of Spanish Culture and Civilization in the Department of Romance Studies at Tufts University,^[1] President of the International Association of Peruvianists since 1996,^[2] and Director of the Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana since 2010. He is considered an expert in Latin American colonial literature, especially in El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and the formation of criollo cultures, a critic of Latin American contemporary poetry, and a prominent member of the Peruvian 1980s literary generation. He received the José Lezama Lima special poetry prize from Casa de las Américas, Cuba, in 2018, for his collection El zorro y la luna. Poemas reunidos, 1981-2016.

During his early years, Mazzotti won the First Prize in the 1980 "Túpac Amaru" Poetry Contest at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, with Poemas no recogidos en libro (Poems Not Collected in a Book, Lima, 1981). In 1985, he published his second collection, Fierro curvo (órbita poética) (Curved Iron (poetic orbit)), and in 1988 his third book, Castillo de popa (Poop Deck), which reflects the state of mind of a wide sector of Peruvian youth at that time in the face of the difficult years of the civil war and the galloping economic deterioration of the country. The book was a finalist in the Casa de las Américas Award in Havana that same year. He has also published the poetry collections El libro de las auroras boreales (The Book of the Northern Lights, Amherst, MA, 1995), Señora de la noche (Lady of the Night, Mexico City, 1998), El Zorro y la Luna. Antología Poética 1981-1999 (The Fox and the Moon. Poetry Anthology 1981-1999, Lima, 1999), Sakra Boccata (Mexico City, 2006, and Lima, 2007, with a foreword by Raúl Zurita), Las flores del Mall (The Flowers of the Mall, Lima, 2009), Declinaciones latinas (Latin Declensions, Houston and Mexico City, 2015 ), Apu Kalypso / Palabras de la bruma (Lima, 2015), a compilation of his complete work with the same title of El Zorro y la Luna (New York, 2016), and Nawa Isko Iki / Cantos amazónicos (Lima, 2020). A bilingual version of Sakra Boccata with translations by Clayton Eshleman appeared in 2013 in Ugly Duckling Press, New York. The Fox and the Moon, a selection of his poetry in English, was published in 2018 by Axiara Editions (Oregon). He has been included in numerous Peruvian and foreign anthologies, such as the Antología general de la poesía peruana: de Vallejo a nuestros días (Lima), La mitad del cuerpo sonríe (Mexico), La letra en que nació la pena (Lima), Caudal de piedra (Mexico), Fuego abierto (Chile), Cuerpo plural (Spain), Liberation: New Works on Freedom from International Renowned Poets (USA),Volteando el siglo: 25 poetas peruanos (Cuba, 2020), etc.