Luigi Bonaffini is professor emeritus 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); Selected Poems by Giancarlo Pontiggia, 2008.
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.