Biographical Note
Born in Dallas, Texas in 1936, Sol Biderman has taught literature at universities in California; Genoa and Naples, Italy; and São Paulo, Brazil. He is the author of Bring Me to the Banqueting House and the plays When Elvis Met Che in Denver, To Kill a Mandarin, and Unabomber Hotel.
Biderman's interest in the cordel tradition dates to his tenure at the Faculdade de Filosofia de Marilia in São Paulo, Brazil in the 1960s, when he first began to collect chapbooks and meet the cordelistas who wrote them. In 1970, he donated a substantial portion of his chapbook collection to the Library of Congress (AFC 1970/002), which has continued to acquire literatura de cordel through the Library of Congress Office in Rio.