Dean Young has published many notable books of poems, including Design with X, First Course in Turbulence, and Skid, which was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Prize. His more recent poetry books are Elegy for a Toy Piano, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Embryoyo, Primitive Mentor, and Fall Higher. He is also the author of the prose book The Art of Recklessness: Poetry as Assertive Force and Contradiction. He has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts and taught at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and he currently holds the Livingston Chair of Poetry at the University of Texas. He lives in Austin.
Christopher Merrill has published four collections of poetry, including Boat, Brilliant Water, and Watch Fire; many edited volumes and translations; and four books of nonfiction, including Things of the Hidden God: Journey to the Holy Mountain, and The Tree of the Doves: Ceremony, Expedition, War. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages, his journalism appears in many publications, and he has been the book critic for the daily radio news program The World. He directs the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa.
Marvin Bell’s twenty-three books of poetry and essays include Vertigo: The Living Dead Man Poems, Whiteout (a collaboration with photographer Nathan Lyons), Mars Being Red, Rampant, Nightworks: Poems 1962–2000, The Book of the Dead Man, and Stars Which See, Stars Which Do Not See. His literary honors include awards from the Academy of American Poets and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as Senior Fulbright appointments to Yugoslavia and Australia. He taught for forty years at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, teaches now for the brief-residency MFA based in Oregon at Pacific University, and lives in Iowa City, Iowa, and Port Townsend, Washington. See a brief interview with him about writing in the “On the Fly” series at www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC1-Bt8n_Iw.
Tomaž Šalamun was widely recognized as a leading Central European poet and has been translated into many languages. He lived in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and often taught and gave readings in the United States. His many prizes include the European Prize for Poetry. His recent books translated into English are Poker, Blackboards, The Book for My Brother, Row, and Woods and Chalices.
Simone Inguanez, a graduate in law from the University of Malta, is the author of the poetry collections Water, Fire, Earth and I and Ftit Mara Ftit Tifla (Part Woman Part Child). Her work has been published in several anthologies, aired on radio and TV, set to music, and translated into English, French, Arabic, Italian, Russian, Hungarian, and Finnish. She lives in the seaside village of Kalkara.
István László Geher has published six collections of poetry, including Through Five Doors, Draught of Air, and The Fugue of Sand. He has translated the poetry of Emily Dickinson, W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, and many others. He is an assistant professor of English literature at Károli Protestant University, and his awards include the Móricz Zsigmond Literary Grant, the Radnóti Award for Poets, and the Zoltán Zelk Award for Poetry.
Ksenia Golubovichis the author of a novel, Wishes Granted; a travelogue, Serbian Parables; and a book of poems, Personae. She has translated numerous works of philosophy and prose, including Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia and V. S. Naipaul’s Middle Passage. She has written articles and reviews on modern philosophy, photography, literature, cinema, and museums. She lives in Moscow and is editor-in-chief of Logos publishers.
