Juan Pablo Villalobos was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1973. He studied marketing and Spanish literature. He has done a great deal of market research and published travel stories, literary and film criticism. He has researched such diverse topics as the ergonomics of lavatories, the influence of the avant-garde on the work of César Aira, the flexibility of pipelines for electrical installations, the secondary effects of drugs for erectile dysfunction and eccentricity in Latin American literature of the first half of the 20th century. He was awarded a scholarship from the Alban programme, top-level European Union grants for Latin Americans and another from the Instituto de Investigaciones Lingüístico-Literarias of the Universidad Veracruzana. He is presently studying for a PhD in Literary Theory and Comparative Literature at the Universidad Autónoma, Barcelona.