ROQUE DALTON was born in El Salvador in 1935. As a student at the University of San Salvador, he helped found the University Literary Circle, traveled to Soviet Russia, and joined the Salvadoran Communist Party. He was arrested in 1959 and 1960 for inciting peasant revolts and sentenced to execution by firing squad, but was saved by a coup d’état that overthrew the dictatorship of José María Lemus. In 1961, Roque left for exile in Mexico, and then for post-revolutionary Cuba, where he received guerrilla training and where the majority of his works were published. In 1965, two months after he returned to his native country, Roque was arrested, tortured, and again sentenced for execution, this time saved by an earthquake that crumbled his cell walls.
A poet who brilliantly fused politics and art, Roque’s literary work permanently changed the direction of Central American poetry. The author of eighteen volumes of poetry and prose—among them Un libro rojo para Lenin (written between 1970 and 1973), Las historias prohibidas del Pulgarcito (1974), and Pobrecita poeta que era yo (1976)—his writing combines fierce satirical irony with a humane and exuberant tenderness. His book Taberna y otros lugares, a reflection on his time spent in Prague as a correspondent for The International Review, won the Casa de las Américas prize in 1969. In 1973, Roque clandestinely returned to El Salvador to join the armed struggle. Two years later, the poet-revolutionary was falsely accused of being a CIA agent and assassinated by members of his own faction, the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo, during an internal struggle within the organization.

JACK HIRSCHMAN (1933–2021) was a poet, translator, and Poet Laureate of San Francisco. Among his recent collections of poetry is The Arcanes #2 (2019).

BARBARA PASCHKE is a translator and member of the Center for the Art of Translation, the Roque Dalton Cultural Brigade, and the Revolutionary Poets Brigade. Her publications include Riverbed of Memory (City Lights Books, 2001), Volcán (City Lights Books, 2001), and New World, New Words (Two Lines Press, 2007).

CHRISTOPHER SOTO is a Salvadoran poet. His debut poetry collection, Diaries of a Terrorist (Copper Canyon, 2022), was honored with them’s Now Award in Literature for representing the cutting edge of queer culture.

TATIANA MARROQUÍN is a Salvadoran feminist economist and critic of capitalism. She is a former analyst for the country’s national assembly.

JAIME BARBA is a Salvadoran writer and social researcher, based in San Salvador, where he is director-editor of Istmo Editores, a book publisher.

MARGARET RANDALL is a poet, scholar, social activist, and recipient of the Poet of Two Hemispheres award from Poesía en Paralelo Cero, among other recognitions.