Horacio Castellanos Moya was born in 1957 in Honduras, but grew up in El Salvador.  Author of eight novels, he worked twelve years as a journalist in Mexico and has lived in Costa Rica, Canada, Guatemala, Spain and Germany, under the auspices of the Frankfurt International Book Fair.  He currently resides in the U.S. as writer-in-residence of City of Asylum/Pittsburgh.  His novels have been translated into French, German, Italian, and Portuguese.  The English translation of Senselessness will be published by New Directions in May, 2008.

Katherine Silver has translated many works by Spanish and Latin American authors, including Antonio Skármeta, José Emilio Pacheco, Elena Poniatowska, Martín Adán, Pedro Lemebel, and Jorge Franco. She has received two NEA fellowships, one for Horacio Castellanos Moya's Senselessness, and a PEN Translation Fund grant, also for Senselessness. Her collection of modern and contemporary Chilean fiction, Chile, A Traveler's Literary Companion, was published by Whereabouts Press in 2003. She has also translated screenplays, several for major motion pictures, and an assortment of other books and related projects.