Born and raised in Ticul, Yucatán, Janil Uc Tun is winner of the “LXIII Juegos Florales Nacionales de Ciudad del Carmen” in poetry (2022) and the 2022 Premio Nacional de Dramaturgia Joven “Gerardo Mancebo del Castillo Trejo,” an award given annually to a young playwright. Uc Tun’s experimental book of verse Gentry: Or the Name of a Tree with No Memory, where “Polygons” and “The Graves” first appear, is arranged in sections that follow the structure of both the Mayan Calendar and Dante’s Inferno. His work addresses the displacement of ethnic Maya populations in the Yucatán, the deplorable situation of farmworkers under a system dating back to colonial times (the narrator’s father loses three fingers to a farm machine), and the pillaging of fragile ecosystems in the Yucatán Peninsula as gentrification of the region continues.
Allison deFreese is president of the Oregon Society of Translators and Interpreters (OSTI). Her recent poetry translations include Verónica González Arredondo’s I Am Not That Body (Not a Pipe Publishing, 2024), Carolina Esses’ Winter Season (Entre Ríos Books, 2023), Luciana Jazmín Coronado’s Dinner at Las Heras (C&R Press, 2024), Karla Marrufo’s The City Within You (Cathexis Press, 2024), and Marrufo’s The Sweetness of Shipwrecks (Cathexis Press, 2025).
