Giannina Braschi

Giannina Braschi is an award-winning American poet, novelist, and radical thinker who writes in Spanish, Spanglish, and English. Her masterworks include the epic poem El imperio de los sueños/Empire of Dreams, the iconic Spanglish novel Yo-Yo Boing!, the geopolitical tragicomedy United States of Banana, and the multi-genre epic PUTINOIKA. The U.S. Library of Congress calls Braschi “cutting-edge, influential, and even revolutionary,” and PEN America recognizes her as “one of the most revolutionary voices in Latin America today.” Her texts have been widely adapted and applied to theatre, chamber music, graphic novels, painting, photography, artist books, short films, industrial design, and urban planning. Her life’s work is the subject of the anthology of essays, Poets Philosophers Lovers: On the Writings of Giannina Braschi, edited by Frederick Luis Aldama and Tess O’Dwyer. Braschi’s numerous accolades include honors from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Danforth Foundation, Ford Foundation, Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, and PEN America. She has received lifetime achievement awards from the North American Academy of the Spanish Language, Cambio 16 in Spain, and her native city of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Terms frequently associated with Braschi include Postcolonial Literature, Latinx Philosophy, Postdramatic Theatre, Hysterical Realism, McOndo, and Post-Boom. She goes simply by poet.