David Unger



David Unger (born 5 November 1950) is a Guatemalan-American poet and translator. Though he writes in English, he is considered among Guatemala's most important living writers.

Life
He was born in Guatemala City. In 1955 he immigrated to Hialeah, Florida with his parents. Unger graduated from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst with a B.A. and received an M.F.A. in 1975 from Columbia University.

He presently lives in Brooklyn, New York City, with his wife, the artist Anne Gilman. He is currently teaching at the City College of New York and is the U.S. Representative for the Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara.

He has translated more than a dozen books, including three books by Guatemalan Rigoberta Menchu (Groundwood Books ), two books by Cuban Teresa Cardenas (Groundwood Books), The Love You Promised Me by Mexican Silvia Molina (Curbstone Press), First Love by Mexican Elena Garro (Curbstone Press)and The Dead Leaves by Mexican Barbara Jacobs (Curbstone Press). He is the editor and the main translator of Nicanor Parra's Poems and Anti-Poems (New Directions), the most complete collection of this important Chilean poet, and contributed to Enrique Lihn's The Dark Room (New York: New Directions, 1978) and Roque Dalton's Short Hours of the Night (Willimantic: Curbstone Press).

Publications
He is the author of La Casita (Mexico: CIDCLI, 2012), The Price of Escape (New York: Akashic Books, 2011), Para mi, eres divina (Mexico: Random House Mondadori, 2011), Ni chicha, ni limonada (F y G Editores, 2009; Recorded Books, 2010), Life in the Damn Tropics (Wisconsin University Press, 2004), which has been published in Spanish (Mexico: Plaza y Janes, 2004) and Chinese (Taipei: Locus Publishers, 2006), and Neither Caterpillar Nor Butterfly (New York: Es Que Somos Muy Pobres Press, 1985).