14 Facts About Homero Aridjis

Homero Aridjis's father fought in the Greek army during World War I and the Greco-Turkish War, when his family was forced to flee from their home in Tire, southeast of Smyrna, in Asia Minor.

Homero Aridjis's mother grew up in Contepec amidst the turmoil of the Mexican Revolution.

Homero Aridjis has published 51 books of poetry and prose, many of them translated into a dozen languages.

Homero Aridjis's achievements include: the Xavier Villaurrutia Award for best book of the year for Mirandola dormir, in 1964, the youngest writer to receive the prize; the Diana-Novedades Literary Prize for the outstanding novel in Spanish, for Memorias del nuevo mundo, in 1988; and the Grinzane Cavour Prize, for best foreign fiction, in 1992, for the Italian translation of 1492, Vida y tiempos de Juan Cabezon de Castilla.

Homero Aridjis received the Prix Roger Caillois in France for his poetry and prose and Serbia's highest literary honor, the Smederevo Golden Key Prize, for his poetry.

Twice the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, Homero Aridjis was named Doctor Honoris Causa by Indiana University.

Homero Aridjis has been a visiting professor at Indiana University, New York University and Columbia University, and held the Nichols Chair in Humanities and the Public Sphere at the University of California, Irvine.

Homero Aridjis has been an editorial page columnist at the Mexican newspapers La Jornada, Reforma and El Universal since 1985, publishing hundreds of articles about environmental, political and literary topics.

Homero Aridjis has served as Mexico's ambassador to the Netherlands and Switzerland and to UNESCO in Paris.

Homero Aridjis is increasingly renowned as one of Latin America's leading environmental activists.

In March 1985 Homero Aridjis founded and became president of the Group of 100, an association of prominent artists and intellectuals, including Octavio Paz, Juan Rulfo, Rufino Tamayo, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Alvaro Mutis, Augusto Monterroso, Francisco Toledo, Leonora Carrington, Mathias Goeritz, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Elena Poniatowska and others, devoted to environmental protection and the defense of biodiversity in Mexico and Latin America.

For five years Homero Aridjis spearheaded the defense of San Ignacio Lagoon, the gray whale nursery in Baja California, successfully preventing Mitsubishi and the Mexican government from building the world's largest solar salt works at the lagoon.

Homero Aridjis obtained funding for both meetings from the Rockefeller Foundation.

Homero Aridjis is the first PEN President living in Latin America.