Juan Carlos Galeano is a poet, translator, and essayist born in the Amazon region of Colombia. He has published several books of poetry, and has translated North American poets into Spanish. Over a decade of fieldwork on symbolic narratives of riverine and forest people in the Amazon basin resulted in his production of a comprehensive collection of storytelling  (Folktales of the Amazon, ABC-CLIO, 2008) the documentary film (The Trees Have a Mother, Films for the Humanities and Sciences, 2008) His poetry inspired by Amazonian cosmologies and the modern world (Amazonia 2003, 2012, and Yakumama and other Mythical Beings, 2014), has been anthologized and published in international journals such Casa de las Américas (Cuba), The Atlantic Monthly and Ploughshares (U.S.).  He lives in Tallahassee, Florida, where he teaches Latin American poetry and Amazonian Cultures at Florida State University. He is currently the director of the FSU Service/Learning Program: Journey into Amazonia in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest.