Eliot Weinberger


Eliot Weinberger is a contemporary American writer, essayist, editor, and translator. His work regularly appears in translation and has been published in more than thirty languages.
Weinberger first gained recognition for his translations of the Nobel Prize–winning writer and poet Octavio Paz. His many translations of the work of Paz include The Poems of Octavio Paz, In Light of India, and Sunstone. Among Weinberger's other translations are Vicente Huidobro's Altazor, Xavier Villaurrutia's Nostalgia for Death, and Jorge Luis Borges' Seven Nights. His edition of Borges’ Selected Non-Fictions received the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism.
Today, Weinberger is primarily known for his literary writings and political articles, the former characterized by their wide-ranging subjects and experimental style, verging on a kind of documentary prose poetry, and the latter highly critical of American politics and foreign policy.

Life and work

Born in New York City, Weinberger's books of literary writings include Works on Paper, Outside Stories, Written Reaction, Karmic Traces, The Stars, Muhammad, the "serial essay" An Elemental Thing, which was selected by the Village Voice as one of the "20 Best Books of the Year," Oranges & Peanuts for Sale and The Ghosts of Birds.
His political articles are collected in 9/12, What I Heard About Iraq, and What Happened Here: Bush Chronicles, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award for criticism and selected for the Times Literary Supplement’s "International Books of the Year." The Guardian said of What I Heard About Iraq: "Every war has its classic antiwar book, and here is Iraq’s." It has been adapted by others into a prize-winning theater piece, two cantatas, two prize-winning radio plays, a dance performance, and various art installations; it has appeared on some tens of thousands of websites, and was read or performed in nearly one hundred events throughout the world on 20 March 2006, the anniversary of the invasion. When George W. Bush visited Angela Merkel's hometown of Stralsund, Germany, in July 2006, the local residents protested with a public reading of the text.
The author of a study of Chinese poetry translation, 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, Weinberger is the current translator of the poetry of the poet Bei Dao, and the editor of The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry, also a TLS "International Book of the Year." He is the series editor of Calligrams: Writings from and on China, jointly published by Chinese University of Hong Kong Press and New York Review Books. Among the other books he has edited are the anthologies American Poetry Since 1950: Innovators & Outsiders and World Beat: International Poetry Now from New Directions.
He is a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books. From 2015 to 2017, he was the literary editor of the Murty Classical Library of India. He serves on the Advisory Boards of the Margellos World Republic of Letters and the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York, as well as the Board of Directors of New Directions Publishing.
In 2000, Weinberger became the only U.S. literary writer to be awarded the Order of the Aztec Eagle by the government of Mexico. He was chosen by the German organization Dropping Knowledge as one of a hundred "world's most innovative thinkers." At the 2005 PEN World Voices Festival, he was presented as a "post-national writer." He lives in New York City.

Selected bibliography

Author