By Manuel Tzoc
Translated by Paul Worley
Manuel Tzoc’s English debut of his poetry collection, Under the Signs of an Impossible Night, weaves together poetry and photography to create a new form of storytelling, breaking the boundaries of both artistic forms.
Publication Date: June 9th, 2026
Paperback: 9781646054329
eBook: 9781646054336
Description
Words and images are intertwined as Manuel Tzoc explores the characteristics of poetic objects. Under the Signs of an Impossible Night explores current society’s relationship to the internet and social media, to writing and being written about, and what these connections mean in relation to indigenous language and memory.
Biographical Note
Manuel Tzoc is a poet, visual artist, and performance artist from Guatemala. His work is intersectional, using poetic language and visual art to explore social realities, focusing on gender, identity, the body, origins, memory, language, image, object, sexual dissidence, and all possible combinations of these. He is self-taught, having learned through workshops, certificate programs, and readings of contemporary art and literature. In addition to self-published poetic objects, he has published a number of books in alternative presses, and his texts have appeared in literary magazines and anthologies throughout Abya Yala. Further, he has presented his visual art in galleries and contemporary art shows locally and internationally.
Paul M. Worley is a settler scholar from Charleston, SC, and Professor of Spanish at Appalachian State University, where he serves as Chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. Co-written with Rita M. Palacios, his most recent book, Unwriting Maya Literature: Ts’íib as Recorded Knowledge (2019), was given an honorable mention for Best Book in the Humanities by LASA’s Mexico Section. With Melissa D. Birkhofer, he is co-translator of Miguel Rocha Vivas’s Word Mingas (2021). He has also translated selected works by Indigenous authors such as Hubert Matiúwàa (Mè’phàà), Celerina Sánchez (Mixteco), Manuel Tzoc (K’iche’), and Ruperta Bautista (Tsotsil).