David Unger (author)


David Unger is a Guatemalan author and translator.

Early life

He was born on November 6, 1950 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 MFA in 1975 from Columbia University.

Career

Unger teaches at the City College of New York and is the International Rep for the :es:Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara|Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara. In 2014 he was awarded Guatemala's prestigious Miguel Angel Asturias National Literature Prize for lifetime achievement. He is the author of Moley Mole/Topo Pecoso ; Sleeping With the Light On ; Vivir en el maldito tropico ; The Mastermind,Para mi, eres divina ; La Casita: Forgetting Spanish,El precio de la fuga, La Casita, The Price of Escape, Para mi, eres divina, Ni chicha, ni limonada, Life in the Damn Tropics, which has been published in Spanish and Chinese, and Neither Caterpillar Nor Butterfly. He has translated more than a dozen books, including three books by Guatemalan Rigoberta Menchu, two books by Cuban Teresa Cardenas, The Love You Promised Me by Mexican Silvia Molina, First Love by Mexican Elena Garro and The Dead Leaves by Mexican Barbara Jacobs. In 2019 he will publish his translation of Stories We Were Never Told.He is the editor and the main translator of Nicanor Parra's Antipoems: New and Selected, the most complete collection of this important Chilean poet, and contributed to Enrique Lihn's The Dark Room and Roque Dalton's Short Hours of the Night. Though he writes in English, he is considered among Guatemala's most important living writers..

Personal life

Unger lives in Brooklyn, New York with his wife the artist Anne Gilman.