The Transentients

Sergio Missana (b.1966) is a Chilean novelist, journalist, scholar, editor, scriptwriter and environmental advocate. He is a professor of Latin American literature at the Stanford University Overseas Studies Program in Santiago, Chile, and Executive Director of the Climate Parliament, an environmental NGO. Missana is the author of seven novels in Spanish, and has published a critical study, La máquina de pensar de Borges (Borges' Thinking Machine), based on his PhD dissertation at Stanford University, in 2003; and a collection of essays, La distracción (Distraction) in 2015. Other works published in Spanish include a collection of travel pieces in collaboration with photographer Ramsay Turnbull; and, with his two daughters, five children's books. Sergio Missana lives with his wife and children in Connecticut. Jessica Powell has published translations of literary works by a wide variety of Latin American writers, including Antonio Benítez Rojo's novel Woman in Battle Dress (2015), which was a finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Translation. Other translations include Wicked Weeds by Pedro Cabiya (2016); Pablo Neruda's book-length poem, venture of the infinite man (2017); Edna Iturralde's Green Was my Forest (2018); Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo's Where There's Love, There's Hate (2013) and Silvina Ocampo's The Promise (2019), both co-translated with Suzanne Jill Levine. Jessica Powell received her BA in International Studies from Vassar College, her MA in Latin American Studies from Stanford University, and completed her Ph.D. in UCSB's Department of Spanish and Portuguese.