Luigi Bonaffini is professor of Italian at Brooklyn College. His publications include La poesia visionaria di Dino Campana (1980) and translations of Dino Campana (Orphic Songs and Other Poems 1992; 2003); Mario Luzi (For the Baptism of Our Fragments, Phrases and Passages of a Salutary Song, Earthly and Heavenly Journey of Simone Martini 1992, 1998, 2003); Vittorio Sereni (Variable Star, 1999); Giose Rimanelli (Moliseide, Alien Cantica, and Jazzymood, 1991, 1995, 1999); Giuseppe Jovine (The Peacock/The Scraper, 1994); Achille Serrao (The Crevice, 1995 and Cantalesia, 1999); Eugenio Cirese, Molisan Poems, 2000; Cesare Ruffato, Selected Poems, 2002; Albino Pierro, Selected Poems, 2002; Stephen Massimilla (Forty Floors from Yesterday / Quaranta piani da ieri, 2002); Carlo Felice Colucci (Selected Poems, 2003); Antonio Spagnuolo (Corruptions, 2004); Luciano Trosio (Oriental Parnassus, 2006).
He edited the trilingual anthology Dialect Poetry of Southern Italy (1997), and co-edited Via terra. An anthology of Contemporary Italian Dialect Poetry (1999); Poesia dialettale del Molise (1993), a trilingual anthology of poetry in the Molisan dialect; and with Achille Serrao Dialect Poetry of Northern and Central Italy (2001) and The Bread and the Rose. A Trilingual Anthology of Neapolitan Poetry from the Sixteenth Century to the Present (2005).
He has received several awards, including the 2003 Italian National Translation Prize.