Jaime Luis Huenún Villa was born in 1967 in Valdivia, southern Chile. He is an award-winning Mapuche-Huilliche poet whose books include Ceremonias (1999), Puerto Trakl (2001), Reducciones (2012), Fanon City Meu (2014), and La calle Maldestam y otros territorios apócrifos (2016), and Ceremonia de los nombres / Kawiñtun Üyelüwün Mew (2021). His latest collection of poetry, Crónicas de la Nueva Esperanza / Chronicles of New Hope, is forthcoming in a bilingual edition from Lom Ediciones in Santiago, Chile.

He has received numerous awards, including the Pablo Neruda Prize (2003), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2005), and the Chilean National Council on Arts and Culture’s Best Work of Literature 2013, for Reducciones, and the Jorge Teillier Prize (2020).

He has also edited several anthologies of Mapuche and other Latin American Indigenous poetry, including Epu mari ülkatufe ta fachantü: 20 poetas mapuche contemporáneos (Lom, 2003). Two of his books are available in English translation: Port Trakl (Action Books, 2008) and Fanon City Meu (Diálogos, 2018). Huenún currently lives in Santiago, where he works in the Chilean Ministry of Culture’s Department of Intercultural Studies.