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Mário de Andrade
(1893–1945) was a Brazilian poet, novelist, critic, musicologist, and folklorist. Known as the “Pope of Brazilian modernism,” he remains one of the most influential figures in Brazilian culture. He served as the first director of São Paulo’s Department of Culture and founded the Brazilian Society of Ethnography and Folklore with Dina Lévi-Strauss, dedicating himself to the preservation of Brazilian cultural heritage until his death in 1945. Andrade wrote numerous studies on regional folk music, traditions, and language, alongside art and literary criticism, as well as eight volumes of poetry, three short-story collections, and three novels. His novel Macunaíma: The Hero with No Character (1928) is the culmination of his explorations of avant-garde poetics and the spirit of the Brazilian people.
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Katrina Dodson
is a translator and writer. She is the translator of Clarice Lispector’s The Complete Stories (New Directions, 2015), which won the PEN Translation Prize. Her translation of Mário de Andrade Brazilian modernist classic, Macunaíma: The Hero with No Character (1928) will be published by New Directions in 2023. Her writing has appeared in the Paris Review, the Believer, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. Dodson holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley, and teaches translation at Columbia University.
“Piaimã the Great” was published as part of Triple Canopy’s Immaterial Literature project area, which receives support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Foundation for Arts Initiatives, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Research for Unknown States, Triple Canopy’s twenty-seventh issue, was made possible through a Craft Research Fund grant from the Center for Craft.