Martín Espada has published more than twenty books as a poet, editor, essayist and translator, including Vivas to Those Who Have Failed and Pulitzer finalist The Republic of Poetry. His many honors include the Ruth Lilly Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Born in Brooklyn, he now lives in western Massachusetts.

"In City of Coughing and Dead Radiators, his fourth book, Martín Espada defines political poetry for the turn of the century. . . . [This] is a book to be opened by those who know the consequences of poets speaking out, but also a book for a larger audience convinced that poetry is a source of survival."