Greg Simon earned his MFA in Creative Writing at Stanford University and has spent most of his life in the Pacific Northwest. In addition to translating the works of Federico Garcia Lorca, Ruben Dario, Gaston Baquero, and others from Spanish into English, Simon has published two volumes of original poetry and numerous essays and reviews in The American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, and other periodicals. Simon and Steve White have also translated the poems of Ruben Dario in Ruben Dario: Selected Writings (2005), Gaston Baquero's The Angel of Rain (2006), and Pablo Antonio Cuadra's Seven Trees Against the Dying Light (2007). Simon's co-editor, Steve White, currently teaches in the Department of Modern Languages at St. Lawrence University.

Much of this collection focuses on Greg Simon and Steve White's translations of Federico García Lorca's (1898-1936) Poeta en Nueva York (1940), written in 1930 and published posthumorously in 1940. He was a poet, playwright, and theater director and a member of the Generation of '27, a generation of influencial poets and authors who incorporated European movements such as surrealism and futurism into Spanish Literature. Lorca was murdered by nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War. Other famous works include the plays Blood Wedding (1932), The Public (1930), and Yerma (1934).