Juan Rulfo (1917-1986), who was born in the Mexican state of Jalisco, is best known for two seminal works that altered the course of Mexican and Latin American literature: El Llano en llamas (1953) and the novel Pedro Páramo (1955).

Douglas J. Weatherford is a professor of Hispanic literature and film at Brigham Young University. In addition to The Burning Plain, he has also translated Rulfo's Pedro Páramo and The Golden Cockerel and Other Writings.