Juan Sánchez Peláez

Poet and translator Juan Sánchez Peláez (Altagracia de Orituco, Venezuela,1922 - Caracas, Venezuela, 2003) was an essential voice of twentieth-century Venezuelan literature. His books of poetry include Elena y los elementos (1951), Animal de costumbre (1959), Filiación oscura (1966), Un día sea (1969), Rasgos comunes (1975), Por cuál causa o nostalgia (1981), and Aire sobre el aire (1989). A friend and collaborator of the Chilean surrealist group Mandrágora, he was one of the first Venezuelans to participate, with a grant from the Ford Foundation in 1969, in the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program, where he was later an Honorary Fellow in Writing. He was literary director of Monte Ávila Editores from 1972 to 1976, and in 1975 he was awarded Venezuela’s Premio Nacional de Literatura.