He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (2000). His translations include The Absent City (Duke University Press, 2000) by the Argentine writer Ricardo Piglia, for which he received an NEA Translation Fellowship Award; Assumed Name, also by Ricardo Piglia (Latin American Literary Review Press, 1995); Dreams and Realities: Selected Fiction by the Argentine writer Juana Manuela Gorriti (Oxford Univ Press, Library of Latin America, 2003); and Juan de la Rosa by the Bolivian writer Nataniel Aguirre (Oxford Univ Press, Library of Latin America, 1998). His first book of literary criticism, Borges and Translation: The Irreverence of the Periphery, was published by Bucknell University Press in 2005. He is also completing his first novel, Leaving.