Jorge Carrera Andrade was among the first generation of South American poets to come to international prominence in the twentieth century. A diplomat and poet, he published seventy books of verse and prose. In 1975 he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Steven Ford Brown's translations of Angel Gonzalez (Spain), Pablo de Rohka (Chile), Pere Gimferrer (Catalonia), and Ana Maria Fagndo (Spain) have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Harvard Review, The Marlboro Review, Poetry, Quarterly West, and Verse. His books include Astonishing World: The Selected Poems of Angel Gonzalez, 1956-1986(Milkweed Editions, 1993), Invited Guest: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Southern Poetry(University of Virginia Press, 2001), Edible Amazonia:Twenty-one Poems from God's Amazonian Recipe Book, translations of the poetry of Nicomedes Suarez-Arauz(Bolivia)(Bitter Oleander Press, 2002), and One More River To Cross: The Selected Poems of John Beecher (NewSouth Books, 2002). Excerpts from his translations of Astonishing World were included in The Vintage Anthology of Contemporary World Poetry, edited by J. D. McClatchy (Vintage/Random House, 1996). To support his translation of Astonishing World he received a translation grant from the Ministerio de Cultura, Madrid, Spain. The American Association of University Presses and the University Press Books Committee chose Invited Guest: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Southern Poetry as one of the "Best of the Best from the University Presses" for 2001.

About Century of the Death of the Rose:

"It is good that there should be a fresh introduction to Carrera Andrade to the American reader — this en face selection in which Steven Ford Brown has done justice to the vivid and surprising originals."
—Richard Wilbur

"A distinctive and important book . . . I am enormously impressed. This volume represents a major contribution to the scholarship of Hispanic literature."
—Ben Belitt

"Steven Ford Brown has accomplished the translator's miracle: he has converted English into the rhythms of the best Spanish poets. We can listen to the very sound of Spanish, to its vocalic resonance, in the fluid and clear music of celebration these poems sing to us. Carrera Andrade, who had a long intimacy with the music of language, has carried on his light and delight in this book of many wonders."
—Julio Ortega

"At last we have Ecuadorian poet Jorge Carrera Andrade in a marvelous translation worthy of a great poet redivivus. Steven Ford Brown has returned Carrera Andrade to where he belongs, among the great constellations of Latin American — nay, World — poetry, where he shines brilliantly as those other magnificent astral forces: Neruda, Vallejo, Lorca, Machado, Aleixandre, Salinas, Jimenez. I've waited a long time for Century of the Death of the Rose"
—Bill Zavatsky