Sergio Waisman was born in New York in 1967. He teaches Latin American literature at the George Washington University in Washington, DC. He earned his doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley. He has translated into English works by Argentine Ricardo Piglia and Juana Manuela Gorriti and Bolivian Nathaniel Aguirre. He received the award from the National Endowment for the Arts for his translation of The Absent City by Ricardo Piglia in 2000. He is also author of the novel Leaving (2004).