Alberto Ruy Snchez is a fiction and non fiction writer, poet and essayist from Mexico City. He received his Ph.D. in 1980 from the University of Jussieu, Paris. He has published widely in scholarly journals and is the author of several books of literary criticism. Since 1988 he has served as the editor-in-chief of Artes de Mxico, which has won more than one hundred national and international editorial awards. He was proclaimed Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 2000, and in 2005 he received the honor of Gran Orden de Honor Nacional al Mrito Autoral in Mexico City. He is also an Honorary Citizen of Louisville, Kentucky, an Honorable Kentucky Colonel, and… an Honorary Captain of the majestic steamship, the Belle of Louisville. In addition, he has served as a Visiting Tinker Scholar at Stanford University and as the Chairman of Creative Non-Fiction Program at the Banff Centre for the Arts.