John Kennedy Godoy is an Assistant Professor of Languages and Literatures at the University of Colorado Boulder. He earned his PhD and MA from Cornell University with graduate concentrations in Latina/o Studies and Latin American Studies. His research focuses on Latina/o and Indigenous literatures from Mexico and Central America and their diasporas.

He is the translator of Letters from Inside a U.S. Detention Center: Carla's Story (Routledge, 2023) and the director of an award-winning documentary on the Mexico–Guatemala border. His previous public humanities and advocacy work has been featured in Harper’s Bazaar, Los Angeles Times, Vogue, and People en Español, and was the subject of a TED Talk at the TED Center in New York City. In recognition of his commitment to publicly engaged scholarship, he was inducted into the Bouchet Graduate Honor Society at Yale University for work with underserved students and communities.

His academic writing appears or is forthcoming in Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, Diacritics, Latin American Cultural Studies, Latin American Literary Review, Modern Fiction Studies, and other venues. He is currently working on two book projects. The first explores childhood migration narratives in U.S. Central American and Chicana/o literature, asking how these stories are informed by or inform politics and media. The second engages with contemporary Maya, Zapotec, and Garifuna poetry and activism.

John is from Pennsylvania and grew up visiting family in Guatemala and El Salvador. He has resided or worked on Lenape, Aniyvwiya (Cherokee), Gayogohó:nǫˀ (Cayuga), Garínagu, Quechua, Lenca, Hinóno'éí (Arapaho), Tsistsistas (Cheyenne), Núuchiu (Ute), Nahuat, and Maya lands.