Orlando Ricardo Menes was born in Lima, Perú, to Cuban parents but has lived most of his life in the U.S. He holds a B.A. and an M.A. in English from the University of Florida. In 1998 he received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Since 2000 he has taught in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Notre Dame, where he is currently Associate Professor in English and Faculty Fellow of the Institute for Latino Studies. His poems have appeared in several prominent anthologies, as well as literary magazines like Ploughshares, The Antioch Review, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Chelsea, Callaloo, Indiana Review, River Styx, Epoch, Spoon River Poetry Review, New Letters, Crab Orchard Review, and Green Mountains Review. Besides his own poems, Mr. Menes has published numerous translations of such poets as the Argentine Alfonsina Storni and the Cuban José Kozer. In 2000 he won an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award. His third poetry collection, Furia, was published in 2005 by Milkweed Editions. Mr. Menes is also the author of Rumba atop the Stones, published in 2001 by Peepal Tree Press (Leeds, England), in addition to being editor of Renaming Ecstasy: Latino Writings on the Sacred (Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe, 2004) and the forthcoming Bending the Bend: Notre Dame Poets, Volume Two (University of Notre Dame Press, 2009).