Donald A. Yates was born in
Ayer,
Massachusetts, in 1930. He began studying Spanish in 1945 at
Pioneer High School (
Ann Arbor,
Michigan). After serving two years in the
Army, he entered
Michigan State University, where he graduated with a master's degree in
Spanish in 1954 and a doctorate in 1961. He wrote his doctoral dissertation, "The Argentine Detective Story", under the guidance of
Enrique Anderson Imbert. At that time he became acquainted with the work of Borges, and after getting in touch with him and receiving his approval, he began to translate some of the stories included in
El Aleph (transl.
The Aleph) and
Ficciones (transl.
Fictions). Together with another graduate student at Michigan State University named
James Irby, he worked on a book manuscript that was rejected several times. Finally, in 1962, it was accepted and published by New Directions as
Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings by Jorge Luis Borges. This was the first collection of Borges'
short stories and
essays published in
English. After the release of
Labyrinths, Yates traveled to
Argentina, where he met and became friends with Borges. The
Fulbright Program sponsored that trip and most of the ones that followed. He was a Fulbright Scholar and Fulbright Lecturer in
Latin American Literature (Argentina) in 1964–65; 1967–68; 1970–71, and 1974–75. He taught in Spanish and English at the
University of Buenos Aires,
John F. Kennedy University, and
La Plata National University, and lectured in Argentina,
Peru,
Chile, and
Uruguay. At the same time, he was a professor in Michigan State University's Spanish department. He translated novels and short stories by other Argentine authors, including
Marco Denevi,
Manuel Peyrou,
Rodolfo Walsh (with whom he co-founded the short-lived New World Literary Agency in the 1950s), Enrique Anderson Imbert, and
Adolfo Bioy Casares. As general editor of the Macmillan Modern Spanish American Literature series, he published numerous anthologies of Spanish American authors. He was president of the International Institute of Latin American Literature from 1971 to 1973. From 1972 until 1976, while he was the head of Michigan State University's Spanish department, he regularly invited Borges to give classes at the institution. In 1982, he retired from the university and settled with his wife, Joanne, in
Napa Valley,
California, where he lived until his death. He continued with his work as a translator, critic, and author. He published his own writings and reviews of literature and films in newspapers and magazines such as
The New Yorker,
The New York Times Book Review,
The Washington Post,
San Francisco Chronicle and
The Atlantic. He began to gather material for a future biography of Borges and wrote memoirs about his friendship with the American writer
Cornell Woolrich, whom he had met in
New York in 1961 and visited year after year at his
Manhattan residence. These memoirs were published, under the title "The Last Days of Cornell Woolrich", in the book
The Big Book of Noir (
Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1998). In 2000
The National Endowment for the Arts awarded him a grant to translate into English the entire prose work of Argentine writer
Edgar Brau, from whom he had previously translated a short story,
The Siesta, published in
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. A book with a selection of these translations was published in 2007 under the title
Casablanca and Other Stories (
MSU Press). This book was one of four finalists for the 2007
PEN Club Award in the translation category. He made his last trip to Argentina in November 2008. The Buenos Aires City Government declared him "Guest of Honor," and the
Academia Argentina de Letras (Argentine Academy of Letters) awarded him a distinction for his work in the translation and dissemination of Argentine literature. That same year,
The Society of Authors (
London) selected
Labyrinths as one of the fifty most outstanding translations in the last fifty years, and the
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation awarded him a grant to complete his biography of Borges. Donald Yates died in October 2017 at his Napa Valley home due to
aplastic anemia. A year later, fulfilling her husband's wishes, his widow gave to Michigan State University the entire collection of manuscripts, correspondence, and photos he had assembled of Borges and other writers from Argentina. In 2020, his home was destroyed by the
Glass Fire that struck the Napa Valley area. ==Selected publications==