Jose Luis Castillejo

José Luis Castillejo (1930-2014) was a Spanish writer, poet and diplomat who was born in Seville and died in Houston. He met Juan Hidalgo and Walter Marchetti in 1966, while working in the Spanish diplomatic service, and became a member of their group Zaj. He called himself a modern writer rather than an experimental one, and his work treats writing as an art form in its own right, made of words, signs and the book itself. Castillejo's diplomatic career took him to Washington, Algeria and West Germany, and from 1978 to 1986 he was Spanish ambassador to Nigeria.