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Ralph Angel is a second-generation American of Sephardic Jewish descent, born in Seattle, Washington. He attended inner-city public schools there, and, while working freight trains for the Union Pacific Railroad, earned his Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Washington. He received a Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of California, Irvine, and has lived in and around Los Angeles ever since. He is currently Edith R. White Distinguished Professor at the University of Redlands, and a member of the MFA in Writing faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Angel has traveled widely in Europe, North Africa, and Central and South America. He commented in the “Afterword†to his translation of the Federico GarcÃa Lorca collection, Poema del cante jondo: “I come from a household of three languages—Ladino, Hebrew, and English— one that I could understand but not speak, one that I could sing but not understand, and one that is the language of my country, at some distance, always, from my home.†When he came to translate Lorca’s poetry, he noted that he was familiar with the music that the poems paid homage to: “It resembled the incantatory medieval singing of the Sephardic synagogue that I grew up in.â€
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