Daniel Borzutzky (born 1974) is a Chicago-based poet and translator. His collection The Performance of Becoming Human won the 2016 National Book Award.
Biography Born in 1974 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Chilean immigrants to the United States, Borzutzky in his work often addresses immigration, worker exploitation, political corruption, and economic disparity.
He received a BA degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1997 and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2000.
Borzutzky has received fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is an Associate Professor of English and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
His 2018 collection Lake Michigan was a finalist for the Griffin International Poetry Prize. In 2021, he published Written After a Massacre in the Year 2018, which was reviewed in The New Yorker and was a finalist for the Chicago Review of Books Poetry Award. His other books include In the Murmurs of the Rotten Carcass Economy; Memories of my Overdevelopment; and The Book of Interfering Bodies.
Alongside his writing, Borzutzky is also known for his work as a translator. He received the 2017 American Literary Translators Association National Translation Award for his translation of Galo Ghigliotto's Valdivia (Co-im-press, 2016) and a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant for his translation of The Country of Planks (Action Books, 2015) by the Chilean poet Raúl Zurita.
Works
Poetry Full-length collections The Murmuring Grief of the Americas. Minneapolis, MN: Coffee House Press. 2024.
Lake Michigan, University of Pittsburgh Press. 2018. , The Performance of Becoming Human Brooklyn, N.Y.: Brooklyn Arts Press. 2016. , In the Murmurs of the Rotten Carcass Economy Brooklyn, N.Y.: Nightboat Books. 2015. , The Book of Interfering Bodies Brooklyn, N.Y.: Nightboat Books. 2011. , The Ecstasy of Capitulation Buffalo, N.Y.: Blaze Vox Books. 2007. ,
Chapbooks Bedtime Stories for the End of the World Bloof Books, 2014. Data Bodies (Holon, 2013) Failure in the imagination, Milwaukee, WI: Bronze Skull Press, 2007.
Poetry/essay Memories of my Overdevelopment, Chicago: Kenning Editions, 2015. Arbitrary tales, Triple Press: 2005. ,
Translations Galo Ghigliotto, Valdivia (co•im•press, 2016) Raúl Zurita, The Country of Planks (Action Books, 2015) Raúl Zurita, Song for his Disappeared Love (Action Books, 2010) Jaime Luis Huenún, Port Trakl (Action Books, 2008)
Honors 2013: National Endowment for the Arts Grant (2013) 2013: PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant, Raúl Zurita's El País de Tablas (The Country of Planks) (2013) 2016: National Book Award, The Performance of Becoming Human (2016) 2017: American Literary Translators Association National Translation Award for Poetry (2017) 2019: Griffin Poetry Prize shortlist, Lake Michigan (2019) 2023: PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, The Loose Pearl by Paula Ilabaca Nuñez (co-im-press)
References
External links Profile at Poetry Foundation website Profile at the National Book Foundation website