Martín Espada has published seventeen books as a poet, editor, essayist, and translator. His work has been translated into ten languages, and collections of his poems have recently been published in Spain, Puerto Rico, and Chile. The Republic of Poetry received the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His most recent collection, The Trouble Ball, was just released this spring. A former tenant lawyer, Espada is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.