Oscar Hahn

Óscar Hahn (b. 1938), the autor of some twenty books of poetry, went into exile from his native Chile in 1974 after having been held in the Arica Prison following Pinochet’s military coup.  He earned a doctorate from the University of Maryland in 1977.  For some thirty years he was a professor of Latin American literature at the University of Iowa, where he now holds emeritus status.  Hahn has been the recipient of the Premio Latino de Nueva York, the Casa de las Américas Prize, Spain’s Loewe Foundation Poetry Award, and the Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Poetry Award.  In 2012, he won both Chile’s National Prize for Literature and the gold medal from the Universidad de Chile for lifetime achievement in poetry.  His works have been translated into English, Greek, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, and two of Latin America’s indigenous languages, Aymara and Quechua.  He currently resides in the United States.