was born in 1970 and is studying theatre production at the Latvian Academy of Culture in Riga. Her debut, a collection of short stories Akas m aja (The Well House), was published in 1999 to critical acclaim. In the same year, she received an award for her play Tumšie brieži (The Dark Deer), published in Latvia ’s literary monthly magazine Karogs and later staged at theatres in Riga and Valmiera, and at the Stuttgart State Theatre. Dzelzzale (Iron Weed, 2001) was staged in Latvia, Denmark and Finland. Her collection of poetry Nakts pragmatike (Night Pragmatist) appeared in 2000 and her novel Uguns nemodina (Fire Will Not Wake You) in 2001. Lately her new play Jasmins (The Jasmine) has been staged by the Independent Theatre Company “United Intimacy”.
is a Turkish Cypriot poet and academic writing in English. She is Head of the Department of Creative, Critical and Communication Studies at the University of Greenwich. Her first collection of poetry Venus Infers was published in 2004. Her poetry, fiction and academic writing engage with the mythic, post-colonial identities and the interstices of private and political memory. She also reviews fiction for The Times Literary Supplement and The Independent. Alev is a member of the PEN Writers in Prison Committee which campaigns for freedom of expression.
was born in Barcelona in 1962. She has a PhD from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona where she now teaches at the Translation Faculty. She came to the foreground of Catalan poetry when she was awarded three of the most prestigious literary prizes for her books Trànsit entre dos vols (Transit between two flights, 2001), and Música i escorbut (Music and Scurvy 2002) and Petrolier, (Oil Tanker, 2003). She has also published the book of poems Coses Petites (Little things) with the prominent Catalan poet Francesc Parcerisas, and a book of essays El plaer de la lectura (The pleasure of reading, 2004). Her fourth poetry book is Jocs de l’oca (The Goose Games, 2006). Her work is included in several anthologies of Catalan poetry and she has been translated into Spanish, English, French, Italian, Sardinian, Macedonian, Finnish, Arabic and Slovenian. Since 2003 she is president of QUARKpoesia and in 2006 she started the poetry imprint Refractions (Refraccions) with the aim to publish bilingual or trilingual poetry books.
(b. 1960) is a poet, essayist, and translator. Following his graduation from Vilnius University with a major in mathematics, he worked for the Culture and Art Institute of Lithuania; in 1994–2002 – a director of international programmes in the Lithuanian Writers Union, a director of an international poetry festival Poetry Spring. Since 2003 he has been working as a chief editor of magazine Vilnius, published in English and Russian languages. Ališanka is a member of the Lithuanian Writers Union’s Board and Lithuanian PEN centre. He has published five books of poetry and two essay collections. In 1992, Equinox (1991) won the Zigmas Gėlė Award. The Return of Dionysus (2001) has received the Lithuanian Culture Ministry Award. Ališanka has translated poetry by Wisława Szymborska, Carolyn Forché, Dannie Abse, Bernardine Evaristo, Jerome Rothenberg, Desmond Egan, Jacek Podsiadło, and others. Ališanka has also received a Poetry Spring award for translation of poetry. His work has been translated into English, French, Polish, Swedish, Russian, Finnish, German and other languages. Ališanka lives and works in Vilnius.
was born in Lisbon in 1960. He is an anthropologist educated in Portugal and the USA, with work on gender and masculinity, as well as on "race" and ethnicity published in Portuguese and English. He currently teaches at the university in Lisbon and is active in the political party Left Block and in the gay and lesbian movement. Also known as a journalist and fiction writer, he contributed weekly editorials to Portugal 's foremost daily newspaper Público between 1990 and 1995. His short stories Quebrar em Caso de Emergência (Brake in Case of Emergency) were published in 1996, and his EuroNovela, a political dystopia about the future of the European Union and a satirical commentary on Portuguese nationalism, won the 1998 Caminho Prize for Sci-Fi.
is a Spanish-born artist currently based in Rotterdam. By using elements of photography, video, documentary, installation and performance she focuses her artistic practice on the communities and issues surrounding memory, belonging, migration and geopolitics. Her work is site and context specific and it actively engages with the public. Her recent work includes an experimental film about the area of Kreuzberg in Berlin and its symbolical relation with migration.
was born 1950 in the village of Maghar in the Galilee. He is a bi-lingual poet, and the author of 6 poetry collections in Arabic, and 6 in Hebrew, as well as a novel and a short story collection. His poems have been translated into many languages. Arayde received his PhD in Hebrew literature from Bar-Ilan University and lectured at Haifa University. He is also a Hebrew-Arabic translator, a critic and a researcher into contemporary Arabic and Palestinian literature. Arayde has two television programs on the Israeli 2nd Channel and is director of the Nisan Mediterranean Poetry Festival in Maghar.
was born in Vitoria-Gasteiz in the Basque Country in 1958. He studied psychology and pedagogy in Salamanca and Basque Philology in Vitoria-Gasteiz. At present he teaches in secondary education. For his first book of poems, Hari Hauskorrak (Fragile threads, 1993), Arregi was awarded the Spanish Critics Prize. Some years later, in 1998, he was awarded the same prize for Kartografia (Cartography) which came out in Spanish in 2000. His work has also been included in Brazilian, English, German, Galician, Slovene and Spanish anthologies. Arregi has contributed to different newspapers and periodicals in the Basque Country, mainly to Egunkaria and Hegats where he is a regular columnist and critic. As translator, he has collaborated on the translation of Wyslawa Szymborska´s poems and in the translation of several Portuguese poets, such as Sophia de Melo, Eugénio de Andrade and Jorge de Sena.
is the pseudonym of José Irazu Garmendia. Born in 1951, he is a poet and novelist who writes both in Basque and in Spanish. Born in Asteasu (Guipuzcoa), he published his first collection of poems Ziutateak (The Towns) in 1976. This was followed two years later by Etopía for which he was awarded the Critics' Prize. Over the last twenty years he has published over twenty books for children and young people and has written radio plays and pieces for theatre. Atxaga's work is bound up with Basque music and he has penned a number of songs in Basque. He owes his literary renown primarily to his novels which have had great success nationally and been translated into several languages. The first of them Bi anai (Two Brothers) was awarded the Critics' Prize in 1985 as was Obabakoak (People of Obaba) in 1988 which, as well as winning the prize for Basque literature, was declared the best book in Spain that year. A figurehead of Basque writing today, Atxaga has recently published two novels in Spanish, El hombre solo (The Lone Man) and Esos Cielos (These Skies). His work occupies a place between the avant-garde and fantastic realism, and the characters and environment he writes of - the Basque people, their world and struggles - are to the forefront in his writings.
was born in Malta in 1977. She studied at the Faculty of Education at the University of Malta and read for a Masters degree in Literacy at the University of Sheffield. She has run writing workshops for both for adults and children. Her poetry and short stories have been collected in anthologies such as Illejla Ismagħni Ftit (2001), Gżejjer (Inizjamed, 2000), F’Kull Belt Hemm Kantuniera (Inizjamed, 2003), Ktieb għall-Ħruq (Inizjamed, 2004), and Storja Tinkiteb (Kunsill tal-lingwa, 2005). Translations of her short stories have been published in literary reviews, including In Focus (Pen Cyprus, 2005), West 47 and Cúirt 21 (Ireland, 2006), and have also been featured online on www.laurahird.com, a web page hosted by Scottish writer Laura Hird. More recently, she has published Others, Across (Inizjamed and Midsea Books, 2005), which contains two short stories translated into English, and Il-Linja l-Ħadra (‘The Green Line’), her first short story collection. In 2003 Clare was a member of the Maltese group representing Inizjamed at the Biennial of Young Artists of Europe and the Mediterranean held in Athens.
(Gokçenur Çelebioğlu) was born in Istanbul in 1971 and spent his childhood in a number of Turkish cities. He graduated from Istanbul Technical University Electrical Engineering Faculty and has a Master's degree in Business Administration from Istanbul University. He has been publishing his poems in Turkish magazines since 1990 and his first collection The Handbook of Every Book came out in 2006. He has translated Wallace Stevens, Paul Auster and a modern Japanese haiku anthology into Turkish, and is currently preparing an anthology of modern American poetry. He is a member of the editorial board of the literary magazine Ç.N. (initials for "translator's note" in Turkish), dedicated to poetry in translation.
was born in Székesfehérvár in Hungary in 1980. He studied Hungarian and English. He has published three poetry collections, Istenek vagytok (You are gods),1999, A felvezető kör (Opening round), 2001, Levegővétel (Respiration), 2007. His poems have been published in three anthologies - Verskarácsony (Poetic Christmas), 2001, Szép versek (Beautiful Poems), 2006 and 2007, and have received critical acclaim in many Hungarian journals and newspapers. The main themes of Babiczky’s poetry are time, identity and self-reflexiveness. The most characteristic feature of his writing is an adroit handling of rhyme and rhythm, and an exploration of the possibilities of language through word-play and allusions to other literary works.
(1961) is the author of two novels, Černý beran (Black Ram, 2000) and Kudy šel anděl (Where The Angel Trod, 2003) and two collections of short stories. The first, Možná že odcházíme (Maybe We're Leaving, 2004), won the prestigious 2005 Magnesia Litera Prize for prose and was nominated for the Czech State Prize for Literature in 2004. His work is noted for subtle psychological analysis of human loneliness and lack of communication.
(1981) lives in Riga, Latvia. Her debut collection, Candies to cut the tongue (2007) was awarded the Best Debut Prize in Latvian Literature. Her poetry has been translated into Polish, Slovak, Ukrainian, English and Lithuanian. She is a literary editor and translator at ¼ Satori, a literature and philosophy portal & publishers (www.satori.lv). Having initially studied sculpture, she has a BA from the Academy of Culture, Riga, in Intercultural relations between Latvia and Poland, and is currently working towards an MA in Cultural Theory. She has translated extensively from Polish, including the works of Adam Zagajewski, Stanislaw Baranczak and Dorota Maslowska.
is from Abergavenny in south-east Wales. He taught at the University of Copenhagen for thirteen years, before joining the editorial staff of the cultural magazine Planet: The Welsh Internationalist, which he edited from 1990 to 2006. He has published 18 collections of poetry, fiction and essays since his debut, Lightning Country (1984). He plays guitar and performs with the bilingual blues & poetry group Llaeth Mwnci Madog/Madog’s Moonshine and his history of the blues, Y Felan a Finnau (The Blues and Me), was published in Welsh in 1992. A collection of essays, The King of Ashes, won a Welsh Arts Council prize for Literature in 1990. A Fellow of the Welsh Academy, his latest books are Sea Lilies: Selected poems 1984-2003 (2006) and Trouble in Heaven (2007). He lives in Comins Coch, near Aberystwyth in west Wales.
was born in Limerick in 1969 and now lives in Dublin. He writes sketches and columns for the Sunday Herald in Glasgow and the Irish Examiner in Cork. He has written about travel and literature for The Guardian, The Irish Times, The Sydney Morning Herald and many other publications. His fiction has appeared in The Dublin Review, The Stinging Fly, Phoenix Best Irish Stories 2001 (ed. David Marcus), These Are Our Lives (ed. Declan Meade) and in a number of periodicals in the United States, including the The Adirondack Review and The Subterranean Review. In 2004, he was shortlisted for the Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award. There Are Little Kingdoms is his first collection of stories.
Meg Bateman was born in Edinburgh in Scotland in 1959. She teaches at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the Gaelic-medium campus of the University of the Highlands and Islands in the Isle of Skye. She has brought out three collections of poetry and has co-edited and translated three anthologies of Gaelic medieval, 17th-century and religious verse. Her collections Aotromachd/ Lightness and Soirbheas/ Fair Wind were short-listed for the Scottish Book of the Year in 1997 and 2007.
was born in 1942 in Çatalca near İstanbul and graduated in Russian Language and Literature. He spent part of his life in exile in Paris and Moscow. His collections of poetry are Ne Yağmur…Ne Şiirler (Neither Rain… Nor Poems, 1976), Kuşatmada (During the Siege, 1978), Mustafa Suphi Destan (Epic of Moustapha Suphi, 1979), Dörtlükler (Quatrains, 1980), Bebeklerin Ulusu Yok (Babies don’t have Nations, 1988), Sevgilimsi (You are my Beloved, 1993), Aşk İki Kişiktir (Love is two Person Thing, 1999), Yeni Aşka Gazel (Gazel to a new Love, 2002). He was arrested and sentenced to hard labour as a member of the Turkish Peace Association in 1982, and subsequently went into exile in France where he studied, worked and lived until 1989, when he was acquitted in Turkey. His Epic of Moustapha Suphi (1987/88) was the first play in Turkish staged at the 1989 Avignon Theatre Festival. He was the president of the Turkish Writers Syndicate between 1995-1999, and has been the literary and political critic on staff of the Cumhuriyet daily since 1995. He is the Associate professor and Chairman of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the Istanbul University. In 2003 he was awarded The Great Prize of Poetry 2003 by Turkish International P.E.N.
(1977) published his debut Až umřeš, nikdo už ti nebude chtít sahat na prsa, (When You're Dead, No One Will Want To Touch Your Breasts Anymore) in 2007. A collection of twenty-three stories set in a contemporary small town or village, among ordinary people, is full of accurate psychological character studies and thumbnail sketches replete with atmosphere.
was born in 1963 in Ljubljana where he works as editor at the major Slovene publishing house Cankarjeva Založba. He is the author of four radio dramas and translator of American literature. His debut novel, Plamenice in solze (Torches and Tears), published in 1983, was followed by Tao ljubezni (Tao of Love), 1996 and four collections of short stories, including Menjave kož, 1990, published in English by Northwestern University Press as Skinwaps in 1998 and Zakon želje (Law of Desire), 2000, and two collections of critical essays. His work has been translated into nine languages and his stories have appeared in anthologies The Day Tito Died, 1991, Central Europe Now!, 1995, Imagination from Terra Incognita, 1997, and Afterwards, 2000 and appeared in numerous literary magazines including Lettre Internationale and TriQuarterly.
(1963, Portlaoise) is an Irish writer, poet, critic and director of the Dublin Writers’ Festival. He has published four collections of poetry, the first of which, The Unwound Clock, won the 1989 Patrick Kavanagh Award and was followed by Familiar Things (1993), The Shape of Water (1996) and As The Hand, The Glove (2001). His first short fiction for children, All the Way From China, appeared in 1998. His non-fiction work includes The Portable Creative Writing Workshop (1999) and A Short History of Dublin (2000). He regularly reviews new publications for a number of literary journals and newspapers, including the Irish Independent, and also contributes a monthly Book Club item to the Marian Finucane Show on RTE Radio One. In addition he has co-presented the RTE television books programme, Undercover, and has edited Poetry Ireland Review.
was born in 1970. A prize-winning author of six collections of poetry and translator, he is the editor of Rukopis (Manuscript) a journal of writing and translation and contributing editor of the cultural journal Souvislosti (Connections). His poems have been translated into many languages, the collections Polni práce (Field Work) and Needlebook were published in German, and selected poems in Italian. Borkovec has translated Russian 20th century poetry and has collaborated on translations of contemporary Hungarian poetry, classical Korean poetry and classical Greek drama Oidipus Rex and Oresteia. His selected poems came out in 2006 under the title Vnitrozemí (The Interior) and will be published in English translation by the poet Justin Quinn in 2008 by Seren.
was born in Iraq in 1944 into an Assyrian family. He is a poet, short-story writer and translator. He started publishing his poetry in 1961, contributing to the ground-breaking Shi’r [Poetry] magazine, based in Beirut. He left Iraq in 1968, going to Beirut, and in 1969 to the USA, settling in San Francisco. He has six poetry collections of his own work and has translated many British and American poets into Arabic. A study of his life and works, Sargon Boulus: his Life and Writing (in Assyrian and Arabic), was published in Baghdad, 1999. He lives in the USA and is a consulting editor of Banipal, Magazine of Modern Arab Literature.
(b. 1952) is a Lithuanian poet, translator, and essayist; a member of the Lithuanian Writers’ Union, of the Lithuanian Association of Literary Translators and the Lithuanian PEN centre. Founder and leader of Magnus Ducatus Poesis – the Society of Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian, Polish, Latvian, Russian poets, translators and other artists. Braziūnas is one of the creators of the Movement of the French speaking poets of the Central Europe Cap à l'Est. The first book of poems As Lightning Moves was published in 1983 and Braziūnas received Zigmas Gėlė prize for the best poetry debut. Between 1986 and 2008 Braziūnas has published fourteen poetry books and received many prizes for his poetry in Lithuania and abroad. His own poetry has been translated to Albanian, Bulgarian, Byelorussian, Croatian, English, French, Georgian, German, Italian, Latvian (and Latgalian), Polish, Roumanian (and Moldavian), Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, Ukrainian and other languages. Braziūnas lives and works in Vilnius.
is a translator and PhD student in English-German history. Her interest lies in the relationship between the West and the Middle East, Islam and Democracy and Palestine and Israel. She is working (with Samir El-Youssef) on a project linking the present Middle Eastern situation, particularly Palestine and Israel with past European hostilities, particularly German and British. She is currently fundraising to establish a forum or published book through which a Palestinian-Israeli/German-British narrative can be established.
(1944) has been one of Latvia’s most influential poets and translators for the last several decades. He gained full recognition only after Latvia’s independence was restored in 1991. His first collection of verse, Piemineklis kazai (Monument to a goat), was published in 1980, followed by Poētisms baltkrievs (Poeticism Byelorussian, 1984) and Nenotikušie atentāti (Assassinations that never took place, 1990). His poetry ignored approved icons and found his own authority figures to revere in long gone centuries and far away places, and, taking an unwavering and impassioned stand for the underdog, challenged the moral legitimacy of the powers that be. Bērziņš translates and renders from Slavic, Semitic, Turkish, Iranian, German and other languages, and is regarded as one of the most significant contemporary translators. Bērziņš did fieldwork in the Theology Department of Lunda University on preparation for translation of the Koran into Latvian.
is a poet, essayist, editor and harmonica player with interests in print design and typography, as well as a background in natural history photography. His publications include Aves (Essence Press, 2007), a collection of prose poems about wild birds; Madame Fi Fi’s Farewell and Other Poems (Luath, 2003); and ‘Nothing but Heather!’: Scottish Nature in Poems, Photographs and Prose (Luath, 1999). His poetry is anthologized in The Faber Book of Twentieth-Century Scottish Poetry (2000) and The Edinburgh Book of Twentieth-Century Scottish Poetry (2005). Since 1994 Gerry has published and edited The Dark Horse, a Scottish-American poetry magazine with an international reputation. He has held various writing fellowships and has worked with schools and community groups throughout Scotland. www.gerrycambridge.com
Born in London to Maltese parents in 1978, Antoine Cassar has lived and studied in England, Malta, Italy and Spain. He is currently completing a PhD thesis on the origins of the sonnet. He now lives in Luxembourg, where he works as a translator into the Maltese language. Mużajk, an experiment in the writing of multilingual sonnets which Antoine began almost by accident in early 2005, is an attempt to combine the sounds of different languages into a single rhythm and a single thought. The first set of these 'mosaics' is due to be published in Malta in the poetry collection Ħbula Stirati towards the end of July.
was born to Latvian exiles in Chicago in 1964 and repatriated to Latvia after independence was restored in 1991. He taught American literature and translation at the University of Latvia and Daugavpils Pedagogical University, and now works as a freelance writer and translator. His translations include The Encomium to Riga, a 16th century work by Basilius Plinius (1997), and contemporary poetry by Uldis Bērziņš and Jānis Elsbergs. He is one of the translators of the new History of Latvia in the 20th Century, recently published in English by Jumava. His poems, reviews and other writings have appeared in Sulfur, Hodos, and Notus in the United States, Shearsman in England, Diena, Literatūra, Māksla, Mēs, and Karogs in Latvia, Jaunā Gaita in Canada, and in Lithuanian, Slovenian, and French translation. Part of his extended prose work, The Penetralium, was published by the Oasis Press, and an extract will appear in 10th Muse this spring. He has also written on politics, culture and business in Latgale for The Baltic Times. http://cedrins.blogspot.com
is an award-winning poet, fiction-writer and translator. Her books include The Greatest Stories Ever Told, Abol Tabol: The Nonsense World of Sukumar Ray and Mulla Nasruddin (all published by Penguin/Puffin). Abol Tabol was reissued as a Puffin Classic in 2008 under the title Wordygurdyboom! Her modern retelling of the complete Panchatantra titled Three Brothers and the Flower of Gold was published in July 2008 by Scholastic. Her debut poetry collection Sight May Strike You Blind was published by the Sahitya Akademi (India’s National Academy of Letters) in 2007, and reprinted in 2008. She was awarded the Charles Wallace Creative Writing Scholarship to Edinburgh University in 2005 and the Highlights Foundation Scholarship to the Highlights Writers Workshop at Chautauqua, New York in 2006. Sampurna’s first novel Rupture is forthcoming from HarperCollins later this year.
was born in Athens in 1953, and studied law and Greek literature at Athens University. She now works as a secondary school teacher. Since her debut in 1974, she has published nine books of poetry and one of prose. Her poems have been translated into almost all European languages and have been included in many anthologies of contemporary Greek poetry such as Ten Women Poets of Greece, San Francisco, 1982, and Anthologie de la poesie grecque contemporaine, 1945-2000, published by Gallimard in 2000. Her book A Few Moments Before was short-listed for the 2005 Greek National Prize for Poetry.
was born in Athens in December 1968, and studied Economics in Athens, and Psychology and Social Sciences in the UK. His fiction includes the novellas O vomvistis tou Parthenona (The Parthenon Bomber, 1996) and O manikouristas (The Manicurist, 2000), short stories Oi syntages tou Napoleonta Delastou (Napoleon Delasto's Recipes, 1997) and the novel Shunyata (1999). Since 1999 he has collaborated with artist Diane Neumaier on several art projects. Their artists’ book, The Black Dress, was published in the USA by RCIPP in 2002 and their show Encounters was held at the Reykjavik Museum of Art in 2003. Chris has been featured in many anthologies of contemporary Greek fiction and writes regularly on literary theory for the journal Diavazo. He translates from English and also writes criticism for Athenian newspapers and magazines. Chris has won a number of grants and has been invited to writers’ centres in Sweden, the Czech Republic, Russia, Scotland, the USA and Iceland.
(novelist, essayist, translator; Greece) is among the most prolific young prose writers on the Greek literary scene. He has authored four novels, most recently ‘Imaginary Museum,’ 2005; a volume of essays (‘The Language Box,’ 2006), a collection of short stories (‘Napolean Delastos’ Recipes,’ 1997), a novella (‘The Parthenon Bomber,’ 1996), and, with Diane Neumaier, an exhibition catalogue (Encounters, 2003) and an artist book (The black dress, 2002). His work is available in five languages and he has been awarded grants in Europe and the US. His website is http://www.chrissopoulos-vivlia.blogspot.com/.
was born in Girona in 1942. Poet, painter, playwright, translator, journalist, with a passion for music, he studied in the Monastery of Montserrat and in the faculties of Architecture and Arts in Barcelona. His first works are La llibertat i el terror (Liberty and Terror), Poesia 1970-1980 (Poetry 1970-1980), his great symphonic work, Enigma (1985), En quarantena (In Quarantine) (1990) and L’art de la fuga (The Art of Escape) (2002). He is also the author of plays, books about his hometown and articles about cooking, gastronomy and cultural politics. He has translated writers such as Auden, Pavese, Bassani, Leopardi, Lowell and Montale into Catalan, as well as an anthology of Italian poetry and plays by Luigi Pirandello.
has an educational background in theatre, cultural management and political sciences. She also has experience acting, directing, writing, curating and managing international performance and visual art projects. In 2003 she established the transient multidisciplinary international festival 4x4 which will be in its 5th edition in 2009 in Tromsø (Norway). With her knowledge of social, economical and political issues concerning the Performing Arts sector in Europe, she now teaches and lectures in European cultural policies and trans-European art projects. Through her different activities, Mariane Cosserat aims to build links between artists, artistic disciplines and contemporary issues, to challenge the role of the artist and the audience and to question the position of the citizen, politics and art in our society.
was born in the Mozambican city if Beira in 1955, and lives in Maputo. After discontinued studies of medicine, he worked for many years as a journalist, but returned to science in the late 1980s qualifying as a biologist and teaching at the Eduardo Mondlane University. Since his poetic debut in 1983 with Raiz de orvalho (Root of Dew), he has published a number of collections of short stories including Vozes anoitecidas, (Voices Made Night), 1987, Cada homem é uma raça (Every Man is a Race), 1990, and Contos do nascer da terra, (Tales of the Dawn of Earth), 1997. He has also publishes novels including; Terra sonâmbula, (Sleepwalking Land, 1992) A veranda do frangipani, (The Veranda with Frangipani, 1996) O ultimo vôo do flamingo, (The Last Flight of the Flamingo, 2000) and his latest, Um Rio Chamado Tempo, uma Casa Chamada Terra (A River Called Time, a House Called Earth, 2000). Since 1990, Couto has collaborated with the Maputo-based theatre group “Mutumbela Gogo”, and has written and adapted many texts and some of his stories for performances in Mozambique, Portugal and Brazil.
began writing poetry early in 1999 and made her début later that year as a performing poet. After many performances she entered Flanders’ first poetry slam competition, which she won hands down. Cox writes rattle rhymes and slanging verses that work well on stage, and builds an alienating atmosphere in more carefully written, more delicate texts. Her first poetry collection Pritt.stift.lippe. (2004) was nominated for the C. Buddingh' prize and awarded with the highest stipendium for a literary debut by the Flemish Literature Fund. Cox is currently working on her second collection.
studied Italian literature at the University of Rome. His final dissertation, in Italian Philology, deals with critical issues on the popular Roman literary magazine "Marforio". Cruciani studied the relationships between various dialects used in literary genres as compared to the Italian modern language. His short stories have been published in several magazines like "Carta", "Accattone dei Piccoli", "Next Exit", and www.terranullius.it. His first collection of poetry entitled Le città hanno gli occhi sempre aperti was published in 2005. Some of his translated and published works are - An Interview with Milan Dobricic (from English), An Interview with Manuel Lechado Garcia (from Spanish), An Interview with Martin Almada (from Spanish), Several poems by Adrian Grima (from English/Italian), Le Malentendu by Albert Camus (from French).
was born in 1962 in Törökszentmiklós, eastern Hungary, and graduated from the University of Szeged. He has worked as editor of a Szeged daily since 1989 and as co-editor of the only national literary weekly, Élet és Irodalom (Life and Literature). Although he began publishing as a poet in 1991, he now writes mainly prose. His major short story collections are A veinhageni rózsabokrok (The Rose Bushes of Veinhagen, 1993) A Borgognoni-féle szomorúság (Sadness à la Borgognoni, 1994) and Szerelmem, Dumumba elvtársno (My Love, Comrade Dumumba, 1998). One of his short stories was published in German, French and Dutch translation and three of his short stories have been adapted for the stage and performed abroad. After seven volumes of short fiction came his historical novel, The Legend of the Tear-Grifters, 1999. Encompassing more than a century of Ottoman occupation of Hungary in the 16th and 17th century, it has been hailed as one of the most significant Hungarian novels of the nineties and a work of “amazing imagination and sheer linguistic brilliance”.
was born in Ljubljana in 1961. Poet, essayist, translator and Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Ljubljana, he is a well-known figure on the Slovenian literary scene. Author of six collections of poetry and eight books of literary criticism and socio-cultural essays, including Temno nebo Amerike (The Dark Skies of America, 1991) Zaton idolov, 1994, published in English as The Twilight of the Idols: Recollections of a Lost Yugoslavia in the same year, Individualizem in literarne metafore naroda, (Individualism and Literary Metaphors of the Nation) and Reluctant Modernity: The Institution of Art and its Historical Forms, both 1998. His latest is Lanski sneg: eseji o kulturi in tranziciji (Last Year's Snow: Essays on Culture and Transition), 2002. His poetry was published in English as The Dictionary of Silence and The City and the Child, both 1999, Anxious Moments, 1994, and The Chronicle of Melancholy, 1989. His work has been translated into many languages and his poetry features in a number of foreign anthologies of Slovenian writing. He is the editor of the Slovenian, Croatian and Serbian sections in Shifting Borders: East European Poetries in the Eighties, 1993, and of the anthologies Prisoners of Freedom: Contemporary Slovenian Poetry, 1994, and The Imagination of Terra Incognita: Slovenian Writing 1945-1995, published in 1997.
(1980) is a poet, writer, translator and painter. He has published two collections of short stories Kolekcija (Collection, 1999) and Rynek w Smyrnie (The Market Square in Smyrna) 2007), four books of poems, Żywoty równoległe Parallel Lives, 2004) and Wyprawa na południe (An expedition southwards, 2005), Wiersze (Poems, 2006) and Brzytwa okamgnienia (Razor-sharp glance) 2007) He also translates poetry - among others Osip Mandelshtam, W.H. Auden, Philip Larkin, George Szirtes, Mary Oliver - and lyrics - for example songs to music by Astor Piazzola. He has been awarded several literary prizes, including the prestigious Kościelski Prize in 2005.
(b. 1972) is a poet, translator, and a member of Lithuanian Writers Union. He has graduated from MA studies in philosophy at Vilnius University in 1996 and from PhD studies in philosophy at Graduate School for Social Research in Warsaw, Poland – in 2002. In 2004 he defended his PhD degree at Polish Academy of Sciences. In 2003 he was writing reviews on Polish press for Lithuanian cultural magazine Naujasis Židinys. Working as an independent translator, he translates essays, prose, poetry, studies in humanities mostly from Polish, Ukrainian and other Central-Eastern European languages for prestigious Lithuanian publishers: Mintis, Aidai, and others. In 2005 he published a poetry book Exceptions that was awarded the “Young Yotvingian” award at prestigious Druskininkai Poetic Fall festival in 2006.His work has been translated into Latvian, Slovenian, and English. Dekšnys lives and works in Vilnius.
was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1951. She attended the School of Applied Arts and graduated from the University of Latvia where she studied French and English languages, later she studied Croatian in Zagreb. Her first poetry book, Brūnās zvaigznes (The Brown Stars) was published in 1971, and she has written prolifically ever since, publishing eight collections of poetry and five books of prose. In addition, she has published several books for children and many translations from French, English, Russian, Spanish, Polish, Bulgarian, Croatian languages. Among the authors she has translated are the Bronte sisters, Jane Austin, F. Scott Fitzgerald, E. Hemingway, T. Hardy, I. Murdoch, H. de Balzac, V. Hugo, Ch. Verlaine, A. Rimbaud, F. Presheren, A. G. Matosh, P. Preradovič, T. A. Ujevich. In 2004 she received the most prestigious prize awarded to Latvian translators for the translation of Moby Dick by Hermann Melville. Her poems have been translated into Lithuanian, Russian, French, English Icelandic, Croatian, Serbian, Polish, Slovak, Bulgarian. A volume of her prose texts have appeared in Armenian in Yerevan.
was born in 1977 in Rapla and began publishing her poems whilst a student at Tartu University together with a dozen other young writers in 'The Group of Hermits' (Erakkond). She is currently researching archaic Estonian folk songs and sings in a folk music band. She lives in Tartu and works as a translator, dance teacher and journalist. Her poetry collections include Spring in Astrakhan (2000), St. Simon's Day (2003), and Swanbonecity (2003).
is a member of the artist’s group WochenKlauser. WochenKlausur has been conducting social interventions since 1993. The concept of ‘intervention’, whose usage in art has undergone an inflationary trend in recent years, is often used for any form of change. In contrast, WochenKlausur, at the invitation of art institutions, develops and realises proposals – small-scale but very concrete – for improving sociopolitical deficits. WochenKlausur sees art as an opportunity for achieving long-term improvements in human coexistence. Artists' competence in finding creative solutions, traditionally utilised in shaping materials, can just as well be applied in all areas of society: in ecology, education and city planning. There are problems everywhere that cannot be solved using conventional approaches and are thus suitable subjects for artistic projects. WochenKlausur has worked on over 20 such projects, successfully conducted by alternating teams that have involved over fifty different artists. http://www.wochenklausur.at/projwahl.php?lang=en
was born in 1961 in Warsaw. He is a poet, translator, essayist, and editor. He graduated in German Studies from Warsaw University. His collection 'Z dnia na dzien' ('From day to day') was published in 1992, and 'Podczas ciebie' ('During you') in 1999. He has translated, among others, Celan, Kunze, Kafka and Lise Aichinger. His works have been inspired by Celan and Ryszard Krynicki's poetry. They are characterised by an unusual, almost epigrammatic linguistic brevity, ambiguity and poetic compactness.Some of his poems are included in Altered State: The New Polish Poetry (Arc, 2003).
(Gaza, 1974) graduated in Arab Literature in Gaza. She worked as a volunteer on women's projects and then became a presenter on various local radio programmes before becoming the culture correspondent for the news agency Wafa. Since 2001 she has worked for a Palestinian satellite station. She is the author of two books of poetry, A very seditious woman (Cairo 1995) and There is still sea between us (Ramallah 2000). Her works are also present in the anthology Fifty years of Palestinian Poetry (Ramallah, 2004) and in A World without a Sky.
is the author of several books in Arabic and English of which the most recent is A Treaty of Love (Halban, London), a novel about a relationship between a Palestinian man and an Israeli woman during the years between Oslo Accords and Camp Divide talks. He was born in Rashidia, A Palestinian refugee camp in the South of Lebanon and since 1990 he has been living in London. In 2002 he started a project of collaboration with the Israeli writer Etgar Keret the fruit of which was Gaza Blues, a collection of stories and correspondence on the pages of international newspapers regarding peace and current events in Palestine and Israel. In 2005 he won the Swedish PEN Tucholsky Award for promoting the cause of peace and freedom of speech in the Middle East. He is a regular contributor to many publications including The Guardian, New Statesman and Al-Hayat newspaper.
was born in 1951 and lives in West Wales. She has published eight acclaimed poetry collections, including the bilingual Eucalyptus, 1995, Cell Angel, 1996, and Cusan Dyn Dall/Blind Man’s Kiss, 2000, and has written librettos, stage plays and documentaries for radio and television. Her work has been translated into several languages and a collection is due to appear in Italian with Mobydick publishers in 2004. Her Garden of Light, a choral symphony, was premiered in New York in 1999 and performed by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. A former lecturer in Welsh literature and a tireless campaigner for minority language and culture rights, she has published a number of articles and academic papers and co-edited The Bloodaxe Book of Modern Welsh Poetry (2003) with John Rowlands and Mererid Hopwood. She is a regular visiting tutor and writing workshop leader in the UK and USA.
(fiction writer; Israel) was born in Leningrad (USSR) and has been living in Israel since the age of 8. Widely translated, Epstein is the author of three collections of short stories, most recently Blue Has No South (2005) and three novels, most recently Dream Recipes (2002). Among his awards is the Prime Minister's Prize for Literature (2003). He writes literary reviews for several newspapers and teaches creative writing in Tel Aviv. His website is http://www.notes.co.il/epstein/.
was born in 1962 in Bartin on the Black Sea. He studied psychology at Bogazici University and oriental languages at Istanbul University. In 1986 he co-founded the Siir Ati (Horse of Poetry) publishing house which brought out over 40 poetry titles in the 1980s. Since his 1986 debut with Yeis ile Tabanca (Despair and Pistol), he has published eight collections, including Kir Agi (Hoarfrost, 1991), Gul ve Telve (Rose and Coffee Grind, 1997) and Sehirde Sansar Var! (There is a Marten in Town!, 1999). His collected poems were published in 2003 and his latest book is Varidik, Yogidik (Once We Were, We Weren’t, 2006). He has also written poems in the Bartin dialect and in other Turkic languages, and has brought a modern approach to the classical Ottoman verse style, aruz, in his book Kara Yazili Meskler (Tunes Written on the Snow, 2003). His translations into Turkish include the poetry of Osip Mandelstam and C. P. Cavafy. He lives in Istanbul.
was born in 1958. He was the editor of the prestigious literary review Varlik and now edits the poetry magazine Yasak Meyve. He has compiled several anthologies of poetry. His selected poems Gectigi Herseyi Opuyor Zaman (Time Kisses Everything It Passes) won the 1997 Cemal Sureya Poetry Award.
(1980, Cadaqués) belongs to the young generation of Catalan multimedia and performance poets. Bypassing publication on the page, he works with his voice and experiments with the possibilities offered by technology, using computer, sound and visual projections. He has performed in a number of countries and has collaborated with artists, musicians and dancers. He is also active as organiser of multimedia poetry events and exhibition-anthologies of performance art and sound / visual poetry and has been running Proposta, the international sound poetry festival in Barcelona (www.propost.org).
was born in Yorkshire, England. She moved to Wales in 1967, and settled on the Llyn peninsula, living also on Bardsey Island (Enlli). Her work has appeared in journals such as The Oxford Magazine, Planet and Poetry Wales and can be read in anthologies such as Anglo-Welsh Poetry 1480-1990 (ed. R. Garlick and R. Mathias, Seren 1990), and Twentieth Century Anglo-Welsh Poetry (ed. D. Abse, Seren 1997). Her work has been translated into French (Sans moutons ni dragons, ed. T. Curtis) and Czech (Drak ma dvoji jazyk, ed. P. Mikes, Periplum 2000). In 2005, Christine Evans was awarded the Roland Mathias prize. Her latest poetry collections are Burning the Candle (Gomer, 2006) and Growth Rings (Seren, 2006) has been chosen for the Wales Book of the Year long list.
(1975) is a poet, translator, and lecturer in American Literature at Warsaw University, Poland. She has published four volumes of poetry, the most recent of which is Tlen (Wrocław: Biuro Literackie, 2009). Her first collection (Listopad nad Narwią) received an award for the best first book of the year (2003). She is also a recipient of Hubert Burda Preis (Vienna, 2005). Her poems have appeared in anthologies in Great Britain, USA, Slovenia and Sweden. Her translations include English and American poetry, prose and criticism (among others: Wallace Stevens, Laura Riding, John Ashbery, Yusef Komunyakaa).
was born in 1959 in Stockport, North England, and lives in London. His parents, both professional basketball players for Hungary's national team, emigrated to England in 1956. He studied Modern Languages at Cambridge and became a freelance journalist, briefly serving as Budapest correspondent for the Daily Telegraph. Now he researches programmes for Channel 4 and writes full-time. His debut Under the Frog, 1992, a funny and sad novel set in Hungary during the start of the Communist era and the 1956 revolution, was short listed for the Booker Prize. Its title is based on the Hungarian expression “under the frog's arse down a coalmine”, which roughly translates as “living at the lowest point of existence”. In his second novel, The Thought Gang, 1994, Fischer combines an extravagant sense of humour with a flair for the grotesque, and The Collector Collector, 1998, “must be the only novel narrated by an antique vessel”. His collection of short stories Don’t Read This Book If You’re Stupid was published in 2000.
was born in 1935 in Brno. She worked in Czech radio during the sixties. In 1968 she emigrated to Switzerland with her husband, the author Karel Michal. In 1985 she moved to Germany and in 1994 she returned to live in Prague. Between 1975 and 1994 she contributed to Radio Free Europe. She began writing in the 1950s but was not allowed to publish until the 1990s. She has published eight collections of poetry and translations from Polish and German. Her short story is included in the anthology Povídky: Stories by Czech Women, Telegram, 2006. The poems in this anthology are from her collections Babí hodina (Hag’s Hour, 1994) and Nyní (Now, 2006).
, born in Dundee in 1968, is currently National Scots Language Development Officer and has been a Brownsbank Fellow. He has lived in Pribram in central Bohemia. He writes in Scots and English, his latest publication being the novel But N Ben A-Go-Go (Luath, 2000). This was very well-received, as was his poetry collection Pure Radge (Akros, 1996).
was born in Dublin, spent his early childhood on a farm in Co. Sligo and went to school in England. A geologist by training, he worked for a period of time in Kenya doing geological research. He has published two books for young people. The first, Katie’s War—set during the Civil War in Ireland—won the IBBY Sweden Peter Pan Award 2000. In 1998 he travelled to Angola to research the landmines question and collect material for his second book, The Cinnamon Tree, about a young African girl who loses a leg in a landmine explosion. He is married with two children and lives in Dublin.
, born in 1934 in Sabadell, is a Catalan poet, translator, playwright, essayist, actor and theatre director. He has translated works of poetry, novels, and theatre from the German, over sixty titles in all, while he has also undertaken numerous theatrical adaptations. He has published the first volume of his memoirs El present vulnerable: Diaris I (1973-1978) (The Vulnerable Present: Diaries I) and in 1980 compiled a volume of poetry and translations entitled Si tot és dintre (If it is all in Here). He turned again to publishing poetry in 1986 with Semblança (Portrait). He has been awarded a number of prizes for his work, is a member of the Association of Catalan-Language Writers and dean of the Institute of Catalan Literature.
is a writer and translator, especially of Paul Auster (the three novels of The New York Trilogy) and of Russel Banks (The Book of Jamaica, Affliction, History of Succeeding, In the Reign of Bone). He has published three novels in the editions Actes Sud - L'invasion des nuages pales (The Invasion of the Pale Clouds, 1988) Les dents de lait du dragon (The Dragon’s Milk Teeth, 1992) and La tentation américaine (The American Temptation, 1993) and the collection of novellas L'Atelier de Barbe-Bleue (The Studio of Blue Beard, 2002).
(pen name: László G. István; poet, translator; Hungary) holds degrees in Hungarian and English Literature from L. Eötvös University in Budapest. He has authored five books of poetry, most recently I Lay Me Down Thy Soul to Keep (2006). His translations of Larkin, Dickinson, Shakespeare, Hughes, and Yeats have appeared widely in journals and anthologies. His awards include a fellowship to the International Writers’ House in Rhodes, an NKA Literary Grant, and the Radnóti Award for Poetry.
(1963) was born in Berlin, and since 1989 has lived and worked in Hanover. A poet, translator and teacher, she has published anthologies dedicated to Central European literatures and poetry translations from Russian, Bulgarian, and English. Her books include award-winning poetry collections Morgen Blaues Tier (A Morning Blue Animal, 1997), Nichteuklidische Reise (Non-Euclidic Paths, 1998), Die Umgebung des Auges (Eye Surroundings, 2004), and the novel Der Pfau (The Peacok, 2008).
was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1976. He graduated with a degree in English Literature from the Eötvös University of Budapest (ELTE), then went on to study Creative Writing at Dartmouth College in the US on a Fulbright Scholarship. His third degree is in Screenwriting from the National Film School in the UK. He is now working on his third volume of poems and has published widely in journals in his native Hungarian. His work has been translated into several languages. Among his many activities, he is the President of the József Attila Circle (JAK), the association of young Hungarian writers. He is also a commissioning editor for Chroma, the London-based literary and arts journal, and poetry editor of Kalligram, a Hungarian literary monthly. He has written a number of international prize-winning short films produced in London, and currently working on both film and theatre projects.
was born in 1973 and graduated from the Faculty of Letters in Bucharest. His literary talent was evident when he was still at high school and he also attended Mircea Cartarescu’s literary club during his studies. But even with this background, his first published work (Time-out, in 1998) was an outstanding example of prosodic and parodic virtuosity. Sorin Ghergut is one the most reserved of writers in the Romanian contemporary literary scene in terms of appearances in literary clubs and public readings, although his first published volume won the national poetry contest.
is the author of a number of poetry collections, including The Ringing Rock (1995), and, most recently, The Lightning Tree (2002). She teaches creative writing and has held writing fellowships throughout Scotland. Her work includes various projects with visual artists and musicians. The book Men and Beasts: Wild Men and Tame Animals of Scotland (2000), together with an exhibition of the same name at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, was the result of a collaboration with photographer Rebecca Marr and was organised with hospital arts charity Artlink. In 2005, Valerie Gillies won a Creative Scotland Award, and is working on a collection of poems entitled The Spring Teller, inspired by Scotland's springs and wells. In 2005 she became Edinburgh Makar (Poet Laureate).
was born in Dublin in 1960 and is currently a Writing Fellow at Sabhal Mor Ostaig. He writes in both Scottish and Irish Gaelic, and his most recent collections are Bealach Garbh (Coisceim, 1999) and On the Underground/ Air a’Charbad fo Thalamh (Polygon 2000).
(1966, Marijampolė) is a Lithuanian poet, prose writer and jazz musician. He worked with the Lithuanian Radio and Television, and since 1994 he has been working with the daily Klaipėda as editor of its literary supplement. He sings and plays bass with the group The Rockefellers. His first book Tattoo was published in 1993, followed by A Bone Pipe. His poetry has been translated into English, German, Swedish, Polish and other languages, and has been included in the forthcoming anthology Six Lithuanian Poets, Arc Publications. He lives and works in Klaipėda. http://grajauskas.googlepages.com/ http://www.imeem.com/people/cokQH5T/playlists/
Niall Griffiths was born in 1966 in Liverpool and lives in Aberystwyth in west Wales. The author of six novels to date, he burst on to the literary scene in 2000 with Grits, a ferocious novel narrated through a series of vernacular voices, which is currently being adapted for television. The novels that followed, including Stump, 2003, Wreckage, 2005, and his most recent, Runt, 2007, confirmed Griffiths's reputation as a writer of striking originality, who looks at the world through the eyes of marginalized characters like the semi-literate, nameless teenage protagonist of Runt, whose inner monologue is "redolent with pagan myth, and richly evocative of the natural world around him". Niall Griffiths' novels have been translated into French, German, Italian and Croatian.
Adrian Grima (1968) lectures in Maltese Literature at the University of Malta and has written poems, short stories and drama for children. His poetry collections in Maltese are It-Trumbettier (The Trumpeter, 1999) and Rakkmu (Weavings, 2006), and a selection was published in English as The Tragedy of the Elephant (2005) and in German under the title Dieser verwundete Frühling - Dir-Rebbiegħa Midruba (2007). He is the coordinator of the Mediterranean cultural organization Inizjamed, and the Maltese correspondent of the Babelmed.net website about culture in the Mediterranean region.
(1977) is a young and gifted Finland-Swedish poet, whose works are now published in Finnish for the first time. The first part of her selection of poems, Sinä siellä kaukana näytät tutulta (You out there, you look familiar) contains ten poems from her first collection of poetry, På diabilden är huvudet proppfullt av lycka (In the slide the head overflows with joy), while the second part consists of her acclaimed collection, Ödemjuka belles lettres från en till en (Softly destined belles lettres from one to another). The poems have been translated by the praised young poet, Kristiina Lähde. Gripenberg won the Arvid Mörne poetry prize in 1998 and the Stig Carlsson prize in Sweden in 2003.
was born in Vámospércs, Hungary. She spent the first 10 years of her life on a small, remote farm and currently works as a literature teacher in a high school. She has been writing for 15 years and appeared on the scene 10 years ago when she won a top place in a short story competition run by Élet és Irodalom (Life and Literature). Since then she has had work published regularly in literary journals and anthologies. Her pieces are typically short prose, although her first novel is about to be published and a film is in production based on her short stories for which she has wrote the screenplay. Her most recent work is Méz és szurok (Honey and Tar – short stories, 2005). Margit Halász lives in Budapest.
was born in 1958 in Prague and has worked as teacher, warehouse and petrol pump worker, journalist and theatre technician. He has published poetry collections Strašná záře (Terrible Radiance, 1991) and Bytost (A Being, 1994) and a collection of poems and prose texts Hluk (Noise, 1997). His latest collection Koncová světla (Rear Lights) was published in 2004.
was born in Salfeet West bank in 1977. He studied painting and graduated from the Fine Art College at Al Najah University. He is now an art teacher at Salfeet Secondary Boys School and works in many fields of art: panting, installation art, sculpture and public art. Since 2001 he has been a member of the Palestinian Fine Art Association and has participated in numerous art workshops and voluntary projects in the West Bank.
was born in Hradec Králové in the Czech Republic in 1930. A poet, essayist and translator from English and German, he worked as publishing editor and second-hand bookseller and after he joined the Charter 77 movement he worked as janitor until the Velvet Revolution in 1989. After 1990 he taught medical ethics at Charles University. His first volume of poetry, Všechna slast (All the Pleasure) was published in Prague in 1964, but all his subsequent work had to come out in samizdat editions and was republished in the 1990s. His collected poems came out in 1996. A selection of his poems in English translation was published by Southword Editions under the title A Stay in the Sanatorium, in translation by Bernard O’Donoghue with Šimon Daníček. He has translated the work of Emily Dickinson, Georg Trakl and Gottfried Benn. 14. 11.
(Vitoria-Gasteiz, 1958) studied psychology and teaching in Salamanca and Basque Philology in Vitoria-Gasteiz. At present he teaches in secondary education. For his first book of poems, Hari Hauskorrak (Fragile threads, 1993), Arregi was awarded the Spanish´s Critics Prize. Some years later, in 1998, he was awarded the same prize for Kartografia (Cartography) which has been translated into Spanish by Gerardo Markuleta (cf., Cartografía, Bassarai, 2000). An anthology of his selected poems has been published by Susa. His work can also be found in various anthologies of Basque poetry published in Spanish, German and Galician. Various poems have appeared in Basque, Spanish and Portuguese magazines. Arregi Diaz de Heredia has contributed to different newspapers and periodicals in the Basque Country, mainly to Egunkaria and Hegats where he is a regular columnist and critic. As translator, he has collaborated in the translation of Wyslawa Szymborska´s poems and in the translation of several Portuguese poets, such as Sophia de Melo, Eugénio de Andrade and Jorge de Sena.
was born in Norwich in 1971. Ground Water (Bloodaxe 2004), his first full-length collection, was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize for Poetry, the Guardian First Book Award and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. He is co-editor of 101 Poems Against War (Faber, 2003) and Strong Words: Modern Poets on Modern Poetry (Bloodaxe, 2000), and in 2005-6 was Poet-in-Residence at the Wordsworth Trust. Matthew has taken part in the Arts Council First Lines poetry tour of the UK in 2001, and was selected by the British Council to participate in a number of writers’ and translators’ workshops, among them: Write On! (Croatia, 2004), Converging Lines (Hungary, 2004), Voices (Argentina, 2007), The New Silk Road (Bangladesh, 2008) and Converging Lines (Greece, 2008). He is a tutor for the Arvon Foundation, the Poetry School and Spread the Word and has taught creative writing in schools and universities. He lives in London where he works as Commissioning Editor, Poetry at Faber and Faber. His biography of Edward Thomas will be published by Faber in 2010.
is director of the British Centre for Literary Translation , based at the University of East Anglia, and a literary translator from French, Spanish and Portuguese. Her most recent translations are the novels Malvinas Requiem by Rodolfo Fogwill, and Dead Horsemeat and Lorraine Connection by Dominique Manotti. Her poetry translations this year include poems by the Argentine author Tomas Eloy Martinez for "Patagonia" and by the Angolan Conceicao Lima for the "Words without Borders" website. She also writes extensively on Latin American photography and her most recent monographs are those on the Peruvian / Amerindian photographer Martin Chambi and the Mexican Manuel Alvarez Bravo. She is currently writing a history of photography in Mexico.
was born in Pembrokeshire and grew up in Cardiff. She attended university in Aberystwyth, Salamanca, Freiburg and London, and studied Spanish and German, the latter to doctorate level. She lectured at Swansea before assuming responsibility for the Arts Council in mid and west Wales. She now works freelance and has translated much Welsh poetry into German and is the co-editor of the anthology of Welsh poetry in English translation The Dragon Has Two Tongues (2003), with John Rowlands. She is the first woman to have won the chair at the Welsh National Eisteddfod. She lives in Carmarthen with her husband and three children.
(1961) is a prose writer and the author of a number of stage plays and dramatisations. In 2004, he won first prize in the Poviedka (Short Story) competition for his prose work Absolútny sluch (Perfect Pitch). Since then he has published collections of short stories under the titles of Karol D. Horváth (2005), Karol D2 Horváth (2005) and Karol 3D Horváth (2006). He is a co-writer of a successful TV sitcom Mafstor and a member of the Živý dôkaz (Living Proof) literary circle. The social and subcultural phenomena of pop culture are typical themes in Horváth's stories. His "heroes" are under the controlling influence of fantasies and obsessions. Horváth can describe aspects of Slovak life in a few words in such a way that they take on a new and often spine-chilling or comic significance. He gives comic dimensions to simple, often banal, episodes and his narration shoots off in an unexpected direction or ends with an absurd conclusion. Horváth's mastery lies in a compressed plot, narrative brevity, and constant hovering on the brink of kitsch and slapstick. Horváth never bores his reader and when it sometimes seems that he has exhausted his options, chimerical vision takes over and assures us that we simply do not understand the "rules of the game" and will never get the hang of the game itself.
(1957) is the author of the novels: Weiser Davidek (1987), Mercedes Benz (2001), Castorp (2004), The Last Supper (2007); short stories: Stories for a Time of Relocation (1991), First Love and Other Stories (1996); poems: Poems (1994). His first novel, Weiser Davidek, was acclaimed by critics as "the book of the decade", "a masterpiece", and "a literary triumph". It was widely translated. Huelle is a writer of his own region – Gdansk – and he considers the most important problems of this borderline site of cultures and nations in the painful history of the 20th century. He recognises Günter Grass as his master in this field, and his writing technique owes a lot to Bruno Schulz, for whom the real world was only a sign of a much richer psychic and spiritual reality, full of mysteries and unsolved secrets. Mercedes Benz (2001)paid homage to and was written in a style resembling that of the brilliant Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal. In a tragic history of contemporary Gdansk, Huelle looks not only for the sources of the Polish-German conflicts, but also for his spiritual roots. The perplexed history of Germans, Poles and Jews in the region, is depicted in a an interesting and original fashion, with tolerance at the heart of its aims.
has lead cross-sector partnerships within art, science and technology for the greater part of her career. Trained as a social entrepreneur at the Danish Kaospilot School of Social Innovation and New Business Design, Toyah has initiated and managed numerous projects in Switzerland, Scandinavia and Bosnia- Herzegovina. She is one of the founding members of Ask Sarajevo, a project where 600 Bosnians aged 6-30 painted their dreams for the future on 5000 square metres of blank canvas. Ask Sarajevo became an exhibition that finally funded the restoration of Sarajevo's youth house. Toyah currently resides in Copenhagen, Denmark. She co-founded CSRPLUS in 2007, a creative consultancy aiming to integrate corporate social responsibility in businesses and boost social innovation. Corporate clients aside, CSRPLUS manages its own projects within art, design and culture. The company also has an office in Sarajevo. Toyah directs the Innovation and Business Design section at the Copenhagen College of Engineering. She also is Head of International Communications at CO2PENHAGEN, the world's first CO2 neutral music and arts festival. The groundbreaking showcase of the newest, cleanest technology around takes place prior to the international climate summit COP15, in December 2009.
was born in 1932 and is the author of fifteen works of fiction – novels, novellas, short story collections and children's books – as well as of non-fiction books, radio plays and a film script. Following the independence of Slovakia in 1993, he became the first ever Slovak Ambassador to Canada. He now teaches political science and diplomacy, and lives in Bratislava. Hykisch is one of the major representatives of the Generation of 1966, which rejected the canon of socialist realism and turned its attention to contemporary life of ordinary people. In his short stories and novels Hykisch unmasks the moral apathy and corruption of the time, and the disillusion with life it produced. His most popular books are however his historical novels, The Time of the Masters and Adore the Queen, published in the 1980s and translated into several foreign languages.
is a Romanian poet, translator and playwright. Collections of poetry in Romanian, also English: Lifeline as a Skyscraper, 2006; narrative verse: Triumph of the Waterwitch (Bloodaxe, UK, 2001), Dragon Kites Over the Mountain in Romanian, Catalan and English. Online: Omnivorous Syllables (www.liternet.ro). Her poetry has been published in the US, UK, Sweden, Greece, Catalonia, Israel, Hungary, Argentina, Russia. Included in Turkish anthology of Romanian women’s poets, Papirus Press, Istanbul. She has participated in multimedia and inter-art events in the U.S.A. and Romania. Extensive translations from and into Romanian: poetry Auden, Ginsberg, Transtromer, Agi Mishol, Fiona Sampson, Amir Or; plays: Shakespeare, Arthur Miller; novels: Joseph Conrad. Former Fulbright program director, Bucharest, Romania’s Cultural Attache to Washington DC (1992-96), secretary of the Romanian PEN Club (2004/6), member of the Writers’ Guild in Romania.
is poet, translator and playwright. She is author of Triumph of the Waterwitch (narrative poetry). The work has been published in English and German translation and was short-listed for the Sir Weidenfeld Prize in Oxford. Online she has published Omnivorous Syllables (www.liternet.ro), with a preface by Fiona Sampson. Ieronim has taken part in multimedia performances in the US, Romania and Greece and has had poems and essays published in Romania, the US, England and Austria. She has translated poetry and recently drama (Shakespeare, Goran Stefanovski a.o.). She works as an editor and cultural journalist and was Romania’s cultural counselor in Washington DC (1992-96), and Fulbright program director in Bucharest. She is a member and former secretary of the Romanian PEN-Club and of the Writers’ Guild in Romania.
was born in 1969 and represents Latvia’s youngest generation of writers. Her first book, Parhaksana (Homecoming, 1992) is a literary and historical exploration of the life of Latvian writer and diplomat Anna Rumane-Kenina. She has published two collections of short stories, Nieki un Izprecias (Trifles and Pleasures, 1995) and Maldigas romances (Misleading Romances, 1997) and is working on a biography of the Latvian émigré Brunis Rubess. She works as editor at the literary magazine Kargos and lives outside Riga.
was educated in literature and political science in Paris. He has experience in international co-operation in the field of development in education and the capacity building of civil society. He works as Co-ordinator of International Co-operation Programmes for the Solidarite-Laique Association. Solidarite-Laique Association is a French non-govermental organisation specialising in international co-operation for development. It was founded in 1956 as a network of local French Educational Organisations and is based in Paris with partners and programmes all over the world, including Eastern Europe and the Mediterrean, West Africa as well as Central Asia and India.
was born in 1958 in Shetland and grew up in the crofting community of Sandness and lives in Edinburgh. His work includes three novels Soor Hearts (1984) Thin Wealth (1986) and A Day in the Office, two collections of poetry, Shoormal (1986) and Nort Atlantik Drift (1999) two plays and a libretto. He was the co-editor of Edinburgh Review until 1998, and had edited several anthologies of Scottish writing. His own work, written in Sjetlin - the Shetlands dialect - Scots and English, has appeared in major anthologies of contemporary Scottish writing including The Faber Book of Vernacular Verse and The Picador Book of Contemporary Scottish Fiction. He has been teaching creative writing at the University of Edinburgh since 1993.
, born in Maribor in 1948, is the most prominent Slovenian writer of today. Novelist, short story writer, essayist and playwright, his works have been translated into many European languages, including five Czech editions with a sixth on the way, and his dramas have seen a number of foreign productions. Among his novels are Galjot (The Galley Slave, 1978) Severni sij (1984) set in the dark year of 1938 in the author's native town and published in English as Northern Lights, Posmehljivo poželenje (1993) a melancholy autobiographical account of a Central European intellectual's encounter with American culture, translated into English as Mocking Desire, and Zvenenje v glavi (Headnoise, 1998) an allegorical treatment of a prison revolt, recently made into a film. His collections of short stories and novellas include Pogled angela (The Look of an Angel, 1992) and Augsburg in druge resnicne pripovedi (Augsburg and Other Real Tales, 1994) containing the title story of a dream-like journey through contemporary Europe. He spent 1985 in the USA as Fullbright Fellow, was engaged in the democratization process in his native country as President of the Slovenian P.E.N. Centre between l987-91, and received the highest Slovenian literary award, the Prešeren Prize for his lifetime achievement in 1993. He lives in Ljubljana.
was born in Cēsis, Latvia, in 1982. Her first novella, Viņpus stikla (“Behind The Glass”), was released in 2006. Four of her short stories have been published in the daily newspaper Diena, and her stories “Mēness vīzijas” (“The Visions of the Moon”) and “Brīnišķīgā jaunā Latvija” (“Brave New Latvia”) were included in short-story anthologies in 2007 and 2008, respectively. Jansone participated in the 2004 National Drama Competition with her play Margarīna paaudze (“The Margarine Generation”), and in 2008 she read an excerpt from her new novel, Insomnia, at the annual Prose Readings.
is a Polish poet, translator and literary critic, who lectures in English at the universities of Lodz and Warsaw. He has published nine volumes of poetry, six critical books on contemporary British, Irish and American literature (most recently a study of Philip Larkin), and has written extensively for various journals, including Poetry Review, Irish Review, Cambridge Review. His poetry has been translated into many languages and presented in international magazines, including Index on Censorship, Paris Review, Oxford Poetry, Poetry Wales, and in The Penguin Book of the Twentieth Century in Poetry (1999). He is editor of the literary monthly of international literature Literatura na Swiecie (Warsaw) and has translated the work of many novelists and poets, including James Joyce, Philip Roth, Edmund White, John Banville, Seamus Heaney, Craig Raine and Simon Armitage.
, born in 1950 in Ljubljana, is a poet, playwright and translator who studied comparative literature in Ljubljana. In the 1960s he was a member of an avant-garde literary-performance group. Now a freelance writer and winner of the Prešeren Foundation Prize (1986), Jesih has translated more than forty plays (Shakespeare, Chekhov, Bulgakov). He has published eight collections of poetry, the most recent being Soneti, drugi (New Sonnets, 1993) and Iambus (2001).
was born in 1955 in Harvey, Western Australia, and spent her childhood in small mining towns in the Australian outback. She obtained her doctorate from the University of Western Australia where she is now Associate Professor teaching Literature and Film Theory. Her first collection of short stories The House of Breathing won four prestigious Australian literary awards and brought the author to the forefront of contemporary Australian writing. Her second collection Fetish Lives (1997) translated into Italian, German and Czech, weaves fact and fiction around well-known historical figures to reveal how the lives of others can become the subject of desire and obsession – in other words: a fetish. Her novel Black Mirror, set in the author’s native region and in Paris, is due to be published this year.
is a prize-winning author of four novels, a book of essays, and a collection of short stories. He lives in his native Majorca and reviews for El Pais. He has been published to great acclaim in France and his novel This Breathing World was published in English translation by Arcadia Books. The novel, which intertwines two stories, one set in first century Rome, the other at present day Harvard, has been praised by critics as "an elegant, disturbing and labyrinthine thriller" and "an ambitious, wickedly clever story about the frailty of the flesh and the dark side of the lust for immortality".www.arcadiabooks.co.uk
from Latvia, is an art historian, writer, and politician. She was born in 1952 in Siberia where her family were deported by the Soviet regime. In 1957, Kalniete and her parents returned to Latvia. In 1988, Kalniete became involved in politics and since 1990, she has held several high-level positions, including charge d’affaires at the UN. She served as the Latvian ambassador to France and Spain between 1997 and 2002, and as Latvia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2002 to 2004. Since 2006 Sandra Kalniete has been a member of the Latvian Parliament. Her memoir With Dance Shoes in Siberian Snows, 2001, highlights a little known chapter in the history of Eastern European post-war history—the deportation of half a million of Latvians to Soviet labour camps—captured the imagination of readers around the world and has been translated into twelve languages.
(1941) is the most widely known and translated contemporary Estonian writer. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, philosophical essays and prose, with over thirty poetry collections in translation into many European languages. He translates poetry from French, English, Spanish, Chinese and Swedish and writes in Estonian, Finnish and English. His books in English are The Wandering Border (1987 and 1992), The Same Sea in us All (1990), I am the spring in Tartu (1991), Through the Forest (1996), and Evening Brings Everything Back, 2004. Jaan Kaplinski contributed to the Estonian cultural and political revival and was a member of the Parliament in the 1990s.
was born in North Wales and raised in the valleys of South Wales. He speaks five languages – Welsh, Breton, French, Spanish and English – and writes poetry in the strict Welsh meter called Cynghanedd as well rapping with hip-hop groups Y Dieygiad and Genod Droog. His poems have been released in various anthologies and he published a new joint collection of poetry with four other Welsh poets entitled Crap ar Farddoni in 2006. Aneirin is a presenter on the daily Welsh language television programme Wedi 7 and he established the first Welsh language programme on the internet called Siaradog.
(1958) has published thirteen poetry collections, most recently Shape of Time (2005). Her poems have been translated into fifteen languages; in 2003 her collection Mandragora was staged by Tallin City Theatre. Kareva has edited anthologies of Estonian poetry, and translated the work of Auden, Beckett, Dickinson, and Shakespeare. After winning the State Cultural Prize in 1993, she launched 'Straw Stipend,' which provides publication funding for ten young Estonian poets. She currently serves as Secretary General of the Estonian National Commission for UNESCO. She participates courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State.
(1975) was born in Kokkola, Finland and now lives in Helsinki. She studied creative writing in Topelius Academy in 1994-1995, and has also studied folklore and aesthetics in Jyväskylä and Helsinki Universities. She has published three collections of poetry with Otava, most recently Harry Harlow’n rakkauselämät; her work has been translated into English, Russian, Estonian, German and Swedish, and has been widely anthologised. She has won several awards, including the 2004 Helsingin Sanomat prize for her first book.
(born 1971) is the art director of a Tallinn-based creative design studio and ad agency Rakett ('The Rocket'), he is an illustrator, designs books, board games and CD covers and runs a alternative micro publishing house Näo Kirik ('The Face Church') as well as writing poetry. He has participated in international poetry events and readings and won numerous awards for his design and art direction work. His poems have been translated into English, German, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Slovenian and Hungarian.
studied sociology at Istanbul University. She works as an editor for a prominent publishing house. Her poetry collections include Delilirikler (Crazylyrics, 1991), Cinayet Kisi + Iki Mektup (Winter of Murder + Two Letters, 1996), Ba (2005—winner of the 2005 Golden Orange Poetry Award), collected poems Kim Bagislayacak Beni (Who’s Going to Forgive Me, 2005) and Y’ol (2006).
(1963) lives in Warsaw. She graduated in Philosophy from Warsaw University and obtained her PhD from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruñ. Her first volume, Sacra conversazione (1992), was awarded the prestigious Koscielski Foundation Prize. Her second poetry collection, Materia prima (1999), was awarded the Polityka Magazine Passport for most promising literary talent and was shortlisted for the NIKE Literary Prize, the most prestigious of Polish awards, in 2000. She has received a number of other literary awards as well as fellowships from cultural foundations in Poland, Germany, Sweden and the USA and her poetry has been translated into eighteen languages and published in numerous magazines more than thirty anthologies. Salt Monody, as selection of poems translated by Elzbieta Wojczik-Leese was published by Zephyr Press in 2006.
was born in 1956 in Engelkirchen, Germany, lived in the UK through the 1990s and now lives in Hungary. She is considered one of the most distinguished translators from Polish into German and has just been awarded the prestigious Berlin Brucke award together with the author Olga Tokarczuk for her translation of the novel Taghaus, Nachthaus. Having translated nearly fifty books, her translations from Polish include prose by well-known authors such as Miron Bialoszewski, Hanna Krall, Aleksander Wat, Ida Fink, Olga Tokarczuk, Magdalena Tulli, and poetry by Ryszard Krynicki. Her own writings include Tiefebene, a memoir, and poetry in the anthology of poetry written in Britain in languages other than English, Mother Tongue.
was born in 1962 in Prague and graduated from the School of Electrical Engineering. He has worked in various jobs and since 1993 he has worked as technical translator from English. He published two poetry collections, Vál za mnou směšný šos (A Ridiculous tailcoat fluttered behind me, 1994) and Viděl jsi, že jsi (You saw that you were, 1998, in German as Du sahst, es gibt dich, 2001) and the novel Stopy za obzor (Footprints leading beyond the horizon, 2006). He lives in the village of Chrudichromy near Brno with his wife and two sons.
was born in Bucharest in 1983. His first poetry book, The Puppeteer (Vinea Publishing, 2003, 2007) won the most prestigious awards for literary debut (including the Mihai Eminescu National Award) and was considered to be one of the best poetry volumes of the “new wave”. His second book, Domestic Circus (Cartea Românească, 2005) was awarded The Romanian Academy Poetry Prize. He was editor of the literary magazine “versus/m” (2005-2007) and now he mainly works as translator of French literature (Tahar Ben Jelloun, René Daumal, Philippe Claudel), and also translates from Italian (Pier Paolo Pasolini) and Swedish (Malte Persson). He is co-author of the play Deformations. His poems have appeared in international anthologies and literary revues and have been translated into German, French, Slovenian, Serbian, Spanish, Polish, Czech and Korean.
was born in 1948 in Athens, studied natural sciences in his native city and in Stuttgart, and obtained his doctorate in social anthropology at the University of Wroclav. He is known as writer, literary critic and translator of sixty-two books from eight languages, as well as book reviewer for the two leading Athens dailies, Ta Nea and Eleutherotypia. He has published a collection of short stories, four novels, a book of texts accompanying famous photographs of the 20th century entitled It’s Over, and three books of literary essays. His latest novel, The Longing of Dragons (2000) to be published in German this year, is a philosophical thriller which explores contemporary Greek identity in relation to Europe through the story of an international chase after a stolen mummy. Demosthenes Kourtovik lives in Athens.
(1969) is a feminist writer and dramatist. She studied social work and is currently devoting her time to the question of homelessness. Some of her short stories have been published in the magazine Aspekt (1999, 2000) and in the collection entitled Poviedka (Short Story) 2001. Her debut was a short book of prose works Neverné ženy neznášajú vajíčka (Faithless Wives Do Not Lay Eggs, 2002), which was followed by a collection of prose works Travesty šou (Travesty Show, 2004) and she has also written two books for the theatre of the homeless: Krvavý kľúč (The Bloodstained Key, 2005) and Oktagon (Octagon, 2006). In 2008 her first novel Žena zo sekáča (A Secondhand Woman) was published.
was born in 1940 in Prague where she still lives when not travelling abroad. A former journalist, banned until 1989, she is the author of numerous articles based on her travels, short stories, novels and books for children. Her writings include Krížová cesta kocárového kocího (The Coachmen’s Calvary, 1977) Arboretum (1987) and Kocicí životy (Cat Lives, 1997). Her biography of Václav Havel was published in English in 1993, and English translations of her work appeared in anthologies Writing on the Wall, Description of a Struggle and Allskin and Other Tales by Contemporary Czech Women.
(1946) was born to Latvian parents in Sweden and today divides his time between the two contires, writing in both languages and translating between them. His first poetry collection Pazemes dzeja (Underground Poetry) was published in the form of poetry sheets and posters. Resented by the conservative Latvian exile circles, his anarchistic rebelling poetry against stagnation and social myths was enthusiastically embraced by the younger generation. His later collections Iesnas un citi dzejoļi (A Cold and Other Poems, 1971), Biszāles (1976), Tagadnes (Presents, 1990), and Mana latviskā ikdiena (My Everyday Latvian Life, 1994), were written in a more minor key, yet the author’s scepticism and irony is present here as well – both in a social sense and in his attitude toward traditional poetic forms and language. In 1994, he published Laiks (Time, 1994), together with the poet Uldis Bērziņš. His collection Vilks Vienacis (Wolf One-Eye, 1996), written after the poet partially lost his sight, was published bilingually in Sweden and in the United Kingdom.
(1970) is a poet, translator from Italian, and lecturer at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. She is known for her translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy and sonnets by Petrarch and other Italian poets. Her only collection of poems Retardacija (Retardation 2001) has received critical acclaim and is considered the best poetry debut of the 1990s.
(1960) first collection Now the Sky, Now the Dial was an immediate success, winning the Poetry Day Prize. Her second collection, Blow the Trumpet, Scorpion! (2001) was also highly regarded and received the 2002 Annual Award for Literature and the 2002 Best Designed Book Award. Langa’s poetry jars against previous post-war Latvian poetry in its absence of naivete and lack of use of the idyllic or a beautiful, lofty idealization of humanity; it is opposed to pathos overall. Her poetry balances grotesque, ugly, disharmonious elements with a reserved yet palpable love of life and integrity free of sentimentality. Langa is also intersted in conveying poetry through other media, as for example in her short film A Tram Called Hope. Sh, also translates from Russian and English.
was born in Veracruz, Mexico, and studied clinical psychology. Her work has appeared in various Mexican publications and a short story was included in the anthology Recuento de cuentos Veracruzanos. Her collection of short stories Noches en la ciudad perdida (Nights in the Isolated City) was published in 1994 and her first novel Los Creyentes (The Believers), 1998, will be coming out in Czech translation in 2001. She has written television and film scripts and has taught film and television production. She is the editor of the literary magazine Complot Internacional and is working on her second novel El dolor es un triangulo equilatero (Pain is an Equilateral Triangle). Norma Lazo lives in Mexico City.
is one of the leading Finnish female authors. Already at the age of 12 she made her début with a novel for young readers Ja äkkiä onkin toukokuu (And Suddenly Came May, 1976). She has an MPhil from the University of Helsinki, and in her thesis she analysed the work of Eeva Tenhunen, a Finnish detective writer. Lehtolainen started her own detective series with the novel Ensimmäinen murhani (My First Murder, 1993), which introduced her detective Maria Kallio. This vivid and original protagonist has brought a much awaited feminist angle to Finnish criminal fiction. To date Leena has published eight crime novels. Besides her career as author she works as a researcher and critic.
Gearóid Mac Lochlainn’s work has won many awards at home and internationally and has been translated into several languages. He has been writer-in-residence at Queens University, Belfast and the University of Ulster. He was also the subject of a TG4 documentary Idir Dha Chomhairle (2007). Mac Lochlainn has worked extensively with the British Council and the Arts Council Northern Ireland. In 2007 he was also a fellow at The William Joiner Centre for the Study of War and Social Consequences at University of Massachusetts, Boston. He received the major Arts Council NI award for poetry in 2006. He has published four collections of poetry in Irish and English: Babylon Gaeilgeoir (An Clochán), Na Scéalaithe (Coiscéim), Sruth Teangacha/ Stream Of Tongues (Cló Iar Chonnachta), Rakish Paddy Blues (limited edition published by Open House Festival).
is often described as the grande dame of Slovenian poetry. Born in 1939, she started her career as a stage actress, but later turned to writing to become one of the best-loved Slovenian poets, a singer of chansons and author of numerous plays and books for children. Her poetry paraphrases the motives, tone and atmosphere of Slovenian folk poems and ballads, and has been translated into several languages. Her poetry collections include Twilight, 1967, Midsummer Night, 1968, The Heart Potion, 1973, and The Wormwood Woman, 1974. In1993, she announced that her collection of that year, entitled That time, would be the last. Two volumes of her selected poems were subsequently published in 1998 and 2002.
was born in Siberia a little more than 40 years ago, and has travelled extensively before settling down in France in 1986. As related in his novel Le testament français, published in English as The French Testament, he learnt French from his grandmother at the age of three, and became convinced that one day he would write in this language. He made the language transition with his third novel, Au temps du fleuve amour, (English edition Once Upon the River Love) winning the most prestigious French literary awards, the Goncourt and the Medicis for Le testament français. He then published Le crime d’Olga Arbélina and Requiem pour l’Est. His last novel, La musique d’une vie, sweeps over decades of Russian history as a background to the story of a young pianist.
has been Director of the Scottish Poetry Library since 2000. New Zealand-born, she moved to Scotland in 1987. She worked as a freelance editor, critic and translator, and has had a long editorial association with Carcanet Press. Her published work includes studies of Louis MacNeice and Sylvia Plath. She lives in Glasgow.
was born in eastern Turkey in 1968 and raised in Kurdish and Turkish. She published her first volume of poems, ‘Mansions full of breezes’ in 1997. Her poetic style is original and thoughtful, setting her aside from traditions and trends. Her first collection was awarded two important literary prizes. Her second collection, ‘Make sure God does not see my letters’, was published in 1999. She writes regularly for literary periodicals.
was born in Budapest in 1959. He studied Hungarian and German Literature and Sociology at the Lóránt Etövös University, Budapest. His works include six plays, six novels and a collection of short stories. Márton has won numerous literary awards and is a former guest artist of the Berlin DAAD and of the Berlin Literarisches Colloquium. He has translated works by Luther, Novalis, Gryphius, Goethe and Heinrich von Kleist into Hungarian.
is a poet novelist, editor and publisher. He was born in 1971 in Angola and lives in Vila do Conde in Portugal. He is the author of three novels - O nosso reino (Our Kingdom, 2004), O remorse de Baltasar Serapiao (The Remorse of Baltasar Serapiao. 2006), for which he was awarded the Jose Saramago Prize, and O Apokalipse dos trabalhadores (The Apokalypse of the Workers, 2008) - and nine books of poetry, including Livro de maldicoes (The Book of Curses, 2006), Pornografia erudite (Enlightened Porn) and Bruno (both 2007), and his latest, the long poem O Sao Salvador do Mundo. His poems have been translated into several languages including French, Spanish, English, Arabic, Czech and Slovenian. He has edited a number of literary anthologies and is jointly responsible for Quasi Press which has published Portuguese-language authors such as Mário Soares, Caetano Veloso, Adriana Calcanhotto, António Ramos Rosa, Artur do Cruzeiro Seixas, Ferreira Gullar. He co-edits the literary magazine Apeadeiro. www.valterhugomae.com
was born in 1959 in Prague, the Czech Republic. He studied English and Czech at Charles University, Prague and later worked as a teacher and translator from English. Among the writers he has translated into Czech are the 17th century classic John Bunyan (The Pilgrim’s Progress, Grace Abounding), James Hogg (Confessions of a Justified Sinner), Samuel Beckett (Watt). For some of his translations he received literary awards. His original work includes a book of poetry "Nuceny vysek" (Destruction of Animals) published in 2003 in Prague by Argo Publishers and sundry short stories and poems published in Czech magazines and broadcast on Czech Radio Prague. His book of short stories Und was published in September 2005 (Argo Publishers). His book of poetry "Deník rychlého člověka" (Journal of a Fast Man) was published in autumn 2007.
was born in 1968 in Tunisia and grew up in Belgium, Iran and Ireland, and now lives in Wales. In 1998 he won an Eric Gregory Award for poetry from the Society of Authors and in 2001 he won the Levinson Prize from the Poetry Foundation and Poetry magazine. His poems, translations, essays and reviews have appeared in the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, The Independent, PN Review, Poetry Wales, Leviathan, and New Writing 10. His first book of poems, The Canals of Mars (2004), was shortlisted for the Roland Mathias Prize and is already being reprinted. A selection of his poetry appears in New Poetries II, edited by Michael Schmidt (Carcanet, 2005). His academic books include Maurice Maeterlinck and the Making of Modern Theatre (OUP, 2000), Symbolism, Decadence and the fin de siècle (University of Exeter Press, 2000), and he has edited the Penguin Classics edition of Against Nature by J-K Huysmans and TE Hulme's Selected Writings for Carcanet. His French Anthologie de la Poésie symboliste et décadente is published by Les Belles Lettres (Paris, 2001). He is a fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford, where he is a Reader in French. Patrick has recently published a new pamphlet, 19th Century Blues (Smith/Doorstop) which was a winner in the 2006 Poetry Business competition.
was born in Northern Ireland and has lived in Scotland since 1970. He is a writer and translator from German. His stories have been published in several anthologies of Scottish writing and he has translated the stage version of Bernard Schlink’s The Reader. His translations of Stella Rottenberg’s poetry have been published in a bi-lingual edition as Shards .
(Castelló de la Plana, 1947) is a biologist, journalist and writer. At the age of 26 he was awarded the Prudenci Bertrana Prize for his book L'Adolescent de sal (The Adolescent of Salt, 1975), a novel that is regarded as both a symbol of its times and an essential, innovating work in the literary scene at the time of its publication. Notable among his subsequent books are Excelsior o el temps escrit (Excelsior or Written Time, 1975), and the collections of short pieces, Doi (Blather, 1990) and Els detalls del món (The Details of the World, 2005). He has also published the poetry collections El bell país on els homes desitgen els homes (The Beautiful Country Where Men Desire Men, 1974), Notes de temps i viceversa (Notes of Time and Vice Versa, 1981), The Blazing Library (1994). His critical spirit and intense, magnetic language have brought him many literary prizes and other forms of recognition. He has been a regular contributor to a range of state-wide periodical publications and an active participant in cultural events. He is a staunch defender of the importance and need for propagation of culture in the broadest sense of the word. Biel Mesquida is an essential reference in present-day Catalan literature and, in recognition of his work, was awarded the Creu de Sant Jordi (St. George Cross) by the Generalitat (Government) of Catalonia in 2005. He is a member of the Associació d'Escriptors en Llengua Catalana (Association of Catalan Language Writers) and vice-president of the Catalan PEN Club.
was born in 1942 in Sofia, Bulgaria, and emigrated to Israel with her parents in 1948. She grew up in Jaffa and studied English Literature at the universities of Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem. She has published six collections of poetry, with two more forthcoming, as well as twenty books of children’s poetry under the pseudonym Adula. She has been awarded several prizes for her work, including the most prestigious prize for children’s poetry, the Zeeve Prize. She has published translations of large selections of poetry by Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, and lately she has translated the Norwegian poets Olaf Hauge and Rolf Jacobsen. She writes articles for the literary supplement of Ha’aretz. She is married to the painter Aharon Messeg with whom she has lived in several rural localities in Israel where they have built their own houses and grown food. She has three grown-up children.
was born in 1952 in South Wales. He studied at the universities of Aberystwyth and Cardiff, then after working in an environmental field, co-founded Friends of the Earth (Cymru) and became the organisation’s joint co-ordinator for some years. He is advisor to the charity, 'Sustainable Wales' and for some years edited the international quarterly, Poetry Wales. As well as being an active environmental campaigner, he is an essayist and poet, having published two collections of essays: Watching the Fire Eater (1992), winner of the 1993 Arts Council of Wales Book of the Year Award; and Badlands (1996), essays about post-communist Albania, California and the state of Wales and England. He has also edited Green Agenda: essays on the environment of Wales (1994). His book, To Babel and Back, was published in 2005 and won the 2006 Wales Book of the Year Award. His poetry collections include A Thread in the Maze (1978); Native Ground (1979); Life Sentences (1983); The Dinosaur Park (1985); The Looters (1989); and Hey Fatman (1994). A Selected Poems was published by Carcanet in 1999, followed by After the Hurricane (2002). In 2003, the same publisher issued his translations from the Welsh, The Adulterer's Tongue: An Anthology of Welsh Poetry in Translation. His first novel, Sea Holly (2007) was recently published by Seren. Robert Minhinnick lives in Porthcawl, South Wales.
is a literary critic, editor and translator. She has published Una infancia de escritor (The childhood of a writer), essays about 20th century European novelists Don Quijote en los Cárpatos (Don Quijote in the Carpathians) and a book on contemporary Spanish women authors Vidas de mujer (Lives of women). She has been a member of numerous literary prize juries and festival selection committees, and is on the editorial board of the literary magazines Sibila, Revista de Libros and La Alegría de los Naufragios. She contributes to the cultural supplement ABCD de las Artes y las Letras and to the reviews Letras Libres and Vanguardia Dossier.
is a Marrakech-based musician, dancer and choreographer. After working as a percussionist for ten years, he turned his attention to dance. He worked with leading choreographers G. Appaix , Hella Fattoumi, Sam Louwick, Bernardo Montet, Mathilde Monnier and Fatou Traoré and founded the first Moroccan contemporary dance company ANANIA with T. Izeddiou and B. Ouizgan in 2003. In 2004, he attended the Centre Chorégraphique National de Montpellier. Since then, his work has been an exploration of dance, music and video art. During his first residency at the Pistolletto Foundation in 2005 he started a line of work involving interaction and exchange with the public. He has collaborated with Fatou Traouré, Mathilde Monnier, the Cie Générique Vapeurs and Taoufiq Izeddiou and played a part in organising the Marrakech choreography event On Marche in 2006.
was born in Porto in 1942. Poet, novelist, essayist and translator of Shakespeare, Dante, Villon, Rilke, Lorca, Gottfried Benn, Walter Benjamin and Seamus Heaney into Portuguese, he has been awarded several prestigious literary prizes including the 1995 Prémio Pessoa. Since his debut in 1963, he has published some twenty collections of poetry, including Instrumentos para a melancolia (Instruments for Melancholy, 1980), A Furiosa Paixao Pelo Tangível (Furious Passion for the Tangible, 1987) and Uma carta no inverno (A Letter in Winter, 1997). Several of his books have been translated into Italian, Spanish and Swedish, and his collected poems were published in 1996. He has been the director of several Portuguese cultural institutions and is now Member of the European Parliament and Vice-Chair of its Committee on Culture, Youth, Education and the Media.
was born in 1958 in Ljubljana. He graduated in Comparative Literature from the University of Ljubljana and pursued an advanced degree in Paris. Poet, writer, translator and editor, promoter of Slovenian literature abroad as director of the Slovenian Literature Centre, and gay rights activist. Since 1990, he has been the editor of the gay magazine Revolver and of the small press Aleph. He has published nine collections of poems and three fiction books, including Obsedenost (Obsession, 1991), short stories Pasijon (Passion, 1993), and novel Angeli (Angels, 1996), some of which have been translated into Croatian, French, German, Italian and Spanish and have been awarded literary prizes. His writing is noted for its feverish style conveying evanescent experience that is a poignant reflection of the post-modern condition and its narcissism. He has also translated a number of French authors (Rimbaud, Genet, Foucault, Maalouf, Brossard).
was born in Ljubljana in 1958. He is a poet, writer, translator, editor of a small press and director of the Center for Slovenian Literature. Mozetič has translated a number of French authors (Rimbaud, Genet, Foucault, Maalouf, Guibert and contemporary poets). He has published eleven collections of poems and three fiction books, including short texts Pasijon (Passion, 1993) and novel Angeli (Angels,1996). He edited an anthology of homoerotic poetry of the 20th century and an anthology of homoerotic motives in Slovenian literature. He won many awards and his books are translated into ten languages. In US were published poetry books Butterflies (2004) and Banalities (2007), and a book of short stories Passion (2005). As a publisher he is preparing an anthology of contemporary Turkish poetry. www.branemozetic.com
One of the most prominent and prolific contemporary writers of Turkey, Murathan Mungan has published poetry, short stories, plays, novels, screenplays, radio plays, essays, film and theater criticism, and political columns. He has over fifteen poetry books, among them Osmanlıya Dair Hikâyat (Stories on the Ottomans, 1981), Metal (1994) and Yaz Geçer (Summer Too Passes, 1992) which has attained the status of a cult book due to its continuing popularity. A selection of his poems were translated and published in Kurdish as Li Rojhilatê Dilê Min (In the East of my Heart, 1996). His works have also been translated into Bosnian, Bulgarian, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Norwegian, Persian and Swedish. Most recently a selection of his short stories were published in German under the title Palast Des Ostens (2006) and his semi-autobiographical narrative Paranın Cinleri (Money Djinns, 1997) in Greek this year. An Italian translation of the same work is forthcoming. Also his 2004 novella Çador (Chador) will be published in French and Italian. Mungan’s trilogy of plays, “The Mesopotamian Trilogy” has enjoyed successful theater runs across the country and the last play of the trilogy, Geyikler Lanetler (Deer Curses, 1992) is on the 2007 program of the Arca Azzura Theater in Italy. His latest publications in Turkish are Kâğıt Taş Kumaş (Paper Stone Fabric, 2007) a play in three parts; Büyümenin Türkçe Tarihi (The History of Growing Up in Turkish, ed., 2007), a volume of short stories from the history of modern Turkish literature, edited in collaboration with the foremost literary critics in the country; and most recently, Yedi Kapılı Kırk Oda (Forty Rooms with Seven Doors, 2007), a book of short stories.
is one of the most prominent and widely translated Slovakian writers, and a distinguished biologist at Comenius University in Bratislava. He is the author of Fever.
is the translator of Ghassan Kanafani’s short story “the Land of Sad Oranges” from Arabic to Maltese. Walid was born in Amman, Jordan in 1966. His family fled Al- Qbeybeh, a small village in the outskirts of Hebron, Palestine after the 1948 war which established the state of Israel and resulted in the first Palestinian Diaspora. Walid took his first education in United Nations schools in Amman. He arrived in Malta in 1990 where he studied laboratory technology. In 1998 he graduated in Biomedical Sciences from Bristol University in England. In 2003 he gained a masters degree in Human Rights and Democratisation from University of Malta. His short story “the Silent” appeared in the “Book for Burning”. Walid is currently teaching the Arabic language at University of Malta.
Fatima Naoot was born in Cairo in 1964 and is an architect by training, but devotes her time exclusively to writing. She has published five poetry collections, four anthologies of literature in translation and one book of literary criticism. Her first collection was published in 2001, followed by One centimeter from the ground (2002), A Longitudinal Section in Memory (2003), Upon a Woman’s Palm (2004) and A Bottle of Glue (2007). She edited an anthology of contemporary Arab poetry Hammurabi’s Sorrows (2003) and her translations include an anthology of Anglo-American poetry A Head Split with an Ax (2004) and Pockets Weighed with Stones (2005), a book on Virginia Woolf. Fatima Naoot is the editor of the cultural magazine Qaws Qazah (Rainbow).
is Director of the Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore, India and is a renowned linguist as well as a reputed poet, playwright and essayist in Maithili and Bengali. He previously set up the Centre in Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies at the University of Hyderabad, and taught in the Universities at Delhi, Baroda and Surat as well. As a creative writer, he has published four collections of poems and twelve plays in Maithili (writes under the pen-name ‘Nachiketa’), as well as six books of literary essays and two volumes of poetry in Bengali, besides translating several books. His recent books include an anthology of poems – Madhyampurush Ekvachan (2005) translated and published in English (2007), Tamil (2008) and German (2009), a play – No Entry: Maa Pravisha (2008) and a collection of one-acts – Priyamvadaa aa anya ekaankii (2008).
was born in 1955 in al-Turra, Jordan. From 1976 he worked as a journalist in television and newspapers, then in the cultural section of Al-Hadaf journal in Beirut, and in Cyprus was arts editor of Al-Ufq magazine. Since 1987 he has been Arts Editor of the Al-Quds Al-Arabi daily newspaper in London. He has published nine collections of poetry and one travel book. Three different volumes of selected poetry have been published, in Cairo in 1995, in 1999 by the House of Poetry in Palestine. In 1998 selected poems were published in French, introduced by Adonis, and in 2000 a volume of his poems was published in Italian. He is one of the founding editors of Banipal magazine.
trained as a medical doctor and is a francophone Algerian writer, poet and translator. She has published several collections of poetry including l’opéra cosmique (2003), Iridienne (2005) and her latest, Cabinet secret (2007). She also writes for theatre and collaborates with various theatre groups. A devoted translator, she mainly works on translations of contemporary Arab poetry. She likes to cross the boundaries of art forms in her work and she regularly performs and reads with artists such as Ammar Bouras and jazz Dimitri Porcu and Lionel Martin.
is a poet, editor and one of the leading translators from Spanish in Israel today. Born in Jaffa, she has lived in Buenos Aires, Bogota & New York, currently lives in Tel Aviv. Recipient of the Women Writers’ Prize in 1998, and the Culture Minister Prize for Beginning Poets in 2001, Nitzan has published three poetry collections: Domestica (2002, recipient of the Culture Minister's Prize for First Book), An Ordinary Evening (2006), and Café Soleil Bleu (2007). Her forthcoming book, A Short History, has won the ACUM (artists & writers rights society) Prize for poetry (2007). An ardent peace activist, Nitzan has organized several political-poetic events, and has edited the ground-breaking anthology With an Iron pen: Hebrew Protest Poetry 1984-2004 (2005), a collection of 99 Hebrew poems of the last 20 years that protest against the Israeli occupation (forthcoming publication of English version in SUNY Press, USA). Nitzan has translated over 50 books into Hebrew, mainly from Spanish, including two anthologies of Latin American poetry, and adapted a Hebrew version of Don Quixote for youth (2006). Her translations include poetry works by Cervantes, Machado, Garcia Lorca, Neruda, Paz, Borges, Vallejo, Pizarnik & Hierro, and prose by García Márquez, Vargas Llosa, Cortázar, Onetti, Delibes, Mendoza, Toni Morrison, Ian McEwan, Angela Carter and many others. She has won numerous awards for her translations, among them the Culture Minister Creation Prize for translators (1995, 2005), and in 2004, an honorary medal from Chile’s president, for her translation of Pablo Neruda’s poetry.
was born in 1957 Tekirdag and graduated from İstanbul University Communications Faculty. Has been living in İstanbul since 1976 and has worked as a publishing editor. His first book of poetry Ateşli Kaval was published in 1981. Among his other works are Çıngırağın Ölümü (1983), Rüzgar Durdurma Takvimi (1985) and Zaman Haritası (1991) which was awarded the the 1992 Cemal Süreyya Poetry Award. His selected poems were published in 1994. He is a distinguished translator of Spanish-language literature and has translated the works of Neruda, Lorca and Octavio Paz into Turkish. His poems were translated and published in several languages, including Macedonian, Romanian and Portugese.
’s work is concerned with the way in which information and space is politicised and how this politicisation is communicated, read and interpreted. Social and political events and the frameworks that they are presented in, be they formal or vernacular, urban or virtual, inform this interest. The work attempts to find formats and story telling strategies that will facilitate possible readings of these politicised arenas. These themes are explored through a variety of means, from sculptural works to site-specific installations and urban interventions to web based work. New formats and media continually present themselves, as there are always new contexts to try to read space in a contemporary manner. http://www.aislingobeirn.com/
was born in Leeds, UK. She has a BA Hons in Philosophy and English Literature from Leeds University, and an MA in Applied Linguistics from Birkbeck College, London University (1996). She has worked in language teaching in Bradford and inner London boroughs, where she also devised courses for English language school and college students, but has spent most of her working life in the printing and publishing industries, starting with the Africa Publications Trust and the Africa Bureau. In April 1992, one year after the Gulf War of 1991, she organised a three-day festival of Iraqi culture Out of Iraq in London to celebrate the richness of the cradle of civilisation through painting, sculpture & photography exhibitions, film, poetry, music, books, crafts and Iraqi food. In 1998, she co-founded Banipal magazine of modern Arab literature in English translation with Iraqi author Samuel Shimon. In 2000, she co-edited with him A Crack in the Wall (Saqi Books, 2000), poems from the last 20 years of the 20th century by 60 Arab poets. In 2004 she was producer of Banipal Live, the first-ever UK tour of Arab authors, and established The Banipal Trust for Arab Literature to raise funds for translation. She was a judge of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2005, and in the same year founded Banipal Books as a book publishing arm of Banipal magazine and was a key figure in establishing The Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, the first prize for published literary work translated from Arabic to English. In 2006, in partnership with the British Council and The Reading Agency, Banipal put on the second Banipal Live UK tour, together with a reader development project to promote Arab authors in English translation in UK public libraries. In 2007 she became a trustee of the newly-established International Prize for Arabic Fiction and a member of the Outreach Committee of the Centre for Advanced Study of the Arab World, a joint project between the universities of Edinburgh, Durham and Manchester.
is the author of two very well-received novels: The Street (2001) and The Sawmill (2003). The latter novel was shortlisted for the Nike Literary Prize. Odija depicts a world deep in the Polish countryside, after liquidation of the state-owned farms struggling to adapt to the changes after the breakdown of communism. Odija depicts the reality of Poland "B" in a naturalistic and linguistically economical way. He uses profound metaphors to consider the nature of the world, death and the nature of human relationships in a new reality of economic transformation.
is among one of most prominent Israeli poets of his generation. Born in 1956 in Tel Aviv, he studied philosophy and comparative religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where he later lectured on history and Ancient Greek religions. He is the author of seven poetry collections and his work has been translated into a number of languages, including the recent English editions Poem (2004) and Day (2006), both by Dedalus Press. He has also published translations from Greek, Latin and other languages. Amir Or was born in Tel Aviv and lived in a number of different places before settling back in his native city where he set up the Helicon Society for the Advancement of Poetry in Israel in 1990. He is now its Artistic Director and Editor of its literary journal, also called Helicon, and of the Helicon-Bitan New Poetry Series. He is the founding Director of the international Sha’ar Poetry Festival, which features Hebrew and Arabic poets, as well as guests from abroad.
was born in Oñati, the Basque Country, in 1956. His first album “Hautsi da Anphora” was released in 1980 and followed by many more, which established his reputation as an innovative musician and songwriter experimenting with traditional Basque music, for example the narrative song, and styles from folk to rock. He is known for setting to music the poetry of Basque writers such as Bernardo Atxaga, Josemari Iturralde, and Joseba Sarrionandia, and for working with musicians from diverse backgrounds. Several of his albums were recorded in London and New York with musicians such as Martin and Liza Carthy, and Fernando Saunders, Ben Monder and Kenny Wollesen. His latest CD is based on the poems of Joseba Sarrionandia.
(b. 1968) is a poet, freelance translator, and actress. She graduated from the Lithuanian Music Academy specializing in acting. Her poems and translations have appeared in the main literary periodicals of Lithuania and in the Poetry Spring and Druskininkai Poetic Fall Anthologies. There were also numerous translations in Kerry Shawn Keys’ bilingual book Conversations with Tertium Quid and in Menke Katz’s bilingual book Selected Poems. The Welsh poet, Menna Elfyn’s bilingual book of poetry, Veiled Kiss, translated by Paliulytė was published in 2005. In same year a book of her own poetry, P.S., was also published. She has received several awards for her poetry and for translations including the “Young Yotvingian” award for the best first book of poetry and for the bilingual book of Menna Elfyn’s poetry translations in 2005. In 2007 she also received the literary award “Menada” from the International Poetry Festival “Ditet E Naimit” in Macedonia. Currently Paliulytė is completing a book of Emily Dickinson’s poetry in translation as well as a second book of her own poetry. Her poems have been translated and published in various magazines in English, Slovenian, Czech, Polish, Swedish, Chinese, Turkish, and Albanian. Paliulytė lives and works in Vilnius.
was born in Athens in 1963. He studied Engineering and was a freelance arts journalist until 1992. Since then, he has worked as a script-writer for TV and cinema, receiving the Best Script Award at the Thessaloniki Film Festival for Nikos Grammatikos’ Truants in 1996. He has published a collection of short stories, I enochi ton ylikon (The Materials’ Guilt, 1997), and his first novel, Ziggy apo ton Marfan. Imerologio enos exogyinou (Ziggy from Marfan. The Diary of an Extra-terrestrial, 1998), portrays childhood as a “savage, inhospitable planet” in the story of a child who believes he is an alien. His latest novel, To gonidio tis amfivolias (The Benefit of Doubt, 1999) is a successful, witty futuristic satire on the advances of genetics as well as on the excesses of the world of publishing, which is turned upside down by the discovery of a test for the “artist’s gene” that can scientifically prove beyond any doubt the presence or absence of real talent. Panayotopoulos’ work has been translated into German, Italian and English, and a French edition of his second novel is being prepared by Gallimard.
is a poet, translator and critic. Since his first book, Vint poemes civils (Twenty Civil Poems, 1966) he has published a number of collections of poetry and literary criticism and has regularly contributed to Catalan newspapers and magazines. His collected poems, Triomf del present (Triumph of the Present) include his poetry up until 1992. Focs d'octubre (October Fires, 1992) and Natura morta amb nens (Still Life With Children, 2000) are his latest collections. Since 1998 Parcerisas works as Director of the Institute of Catalan Literature at the Catalan Ministry of Culture in Barcelona.
(1952, Gandia) is a Catalan poet and translator. Her studies of Philosophy at the University of Valencia have deeply influenced her poetic work, which reflects over the mysteries of life hidden behind ordinary moments and insignificant details, the depth of which is revealed in her verse. She has published collections Flexo (1988), Les hores (The Hours, 1988), Arena (1992) and Curriculum Vitae (1996). Together with Karin Schephers she has translated Destruction of the Titanic by Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Collected poems of Ingeborg Bachmann. She is a member of PEN International.
(1945, Valencia) is a poet and journalist residing in Andorra, where he is deputy editor of the daily Diari d’Andorra, having previously been the editor-in-chief of the Basque weekly Euskadi and the Barcelonian daily Las Noticias. During his stay in the Basque Country, he published fifteen books in Spanish, including a historical novel, collection of short stories, non-fiction and essays. He has published two books of poetry in Catalan, Mai no tornaràs a Ítaca, Ulises (You Will Never Go Back To Itaca, Ulysses), and Entre l’aigua i la pedra (Between the Water and the Stone). In 2001 he was awarded the Tristaina Prize for journalism with his chronicle Deu anys d’Andorra, deu anys de Diari (Ten Years of Andorra, Ten Years of Diari). He is currently working on a historical essay.
is a publisher and translator from Spanish, Italian and Greek into Hungarian. Among the many authors she has translated from Spanish are Javier Marías, Bernardo Atxaga, Núria Amat, Ferlosio Sánchez, Jesús Ferrero. Her translations of poems by Odysseas Elytis, Giorgos Seferis and Jannis Ritsos, as well as by many contemporary Greek poets have been published in Hungarian magazines.
was born in Vaxjo in south-west Sweden, has spent most of her professional life as a medical academic in England, the Netherlands and Scotland, and now works as a medical research consultant, writer and literary translator from the Germanic languages into English. She won the prestigious Bernard Shaw Prize for Literary Translation in 2000 for her translation from Swedish of Forest of Hours by Kerstin Ekman and her English version of A House in Istria by the Swedish writer and journalist Richard Swartz is due to be published by New Directions this year. Her book Scotland’s Landscape, Endangered Icon (2001) is a study of landscape, identity and green policy in Scotland, with comparisons drawn from northern Europe. She lives in St Andrews on the east coast of Scotland and is writing a novel set in the world of medicine and a book about ‘green’ art and architecture.
is a poet and translator. She published three books of poems: Fugatincanti (1996) and Con la pelle accanto (2000), both for Mobydick, while with her third collection, Luce ritirata, dedicated to Camille Claudel, she was awarded the Premio Senigallia – Spiaggia di Velluto 2005. In 2006 Old World Books in Venice published her small plaquette Angeli muti, with one poem translated into English by Philip Morre. A selection of her poems have been translated into Slovenian by Jolka Milič. She translates novels, short-stories and poetry from English and French. Among her most recent translations: La sovrana lettrice (The Uncommon Reader) by Alan Bennett (Adelphi) and Movimento dalla fine (Mouvement par la fin) by Philippe Rahmy (Mobydick). She writes book reviews and essays for Tratti and Leggere Donna and articles on dance performances and concerts in the local press.
was born in 1948 at Skinnastadur, Iceland and is a poet, playwright, translator and novelist. He has worked as professor (University of Iceland and the National Academy of Dramatic Art) and cinema producer. His poetry has been translated into ten languages. Ten plays have been staged between 1975 and 2004, the last one a much acclaimed play on the life of Edith Piaf. He is also the author of tree acclaimed novels: Parísarhjól (The Big Wheel of Paris, 1998), Blár Thríhyrningur (Blue Triangle, 2000) and Naeturstadur (Night Lodging, 2002). His first book of memoirs, Minnisbók (Book of Memory) was published in 2007. He has produced award-winning features Á hjara veraldar (Rainbow's End) and Svo á jördu sem á himni (As in heaven) by Kristín Jóhannesdóttir, and directed three TV films and several theatre plays.
was born in Slovakia in1976 and has lived in Budapest, Prague and Berlin. She studied Hungarian and German in Budapest. Her own work and her translations have been published in both Bratislava and Budapest. She has been awarded bursaries in Hungary, Germany and Poland. Her work has been included in a number of anthologies and she has published five books, a novel, a collection of poetry, short stories a travel book and a novella. She is currently completing work on a dramatic trilogy. She has translated from Czech and Slovak into Hungarian and also translates contemporary German fiction into Hungarian. Since 2006 she has pursued her doctoral studies in Translation and Interpreting in Budapest.
( 1979) lives in Ljubljana. She studied Comparative Literature and Theory of Literature at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ljubljana. She works as a presenter for the independent radio station Radio Študent and takes part in music-poetry performances. Her poems have been published in the journals of Literatura and Dialogi. Her first book of poetry Ena od variant kako ravnati s skrivnostjo (One Way to Treat a Secret) was published by LUD Literatura in the Prišleki series; her second book, Utrip oranžnih luči na semaforjih came out in spring 2009. Her translations of poetry into Slovene include the following: Elizabeth Bishop, James M. Schuyler, Matthew Zapruder (American Linden; Šerpa 2008), Joshua Beckman, Noelle Kocot, Matthew Rohrer, but she also translates into English.
(1941) is a Catalan poet, translator and literary critic. Among her first books of poetry was September 30, (1969), followed by many more, including Berlin Suite (1985), Homage to Walter Benjamin (1988), Love in Barcelona (1998) and the English translation Confessions (1998). Her collected poems were published in 1984 and 2007. She has written on the Bloomsbury group and translated authors such as Forster, Woolf, Lessing, Sontag, Duras and de Beauvoir. Her publications also include a biography of Mercé Redoreda and biographical portraits of outstanding Catalan women authors, such as Maria Aurèlia Capmany and Montserrat Roig.
was born in Paris, grew up in France and Wales and lives in London. In 2004 the Poetry Book Society and Arts Council named her as one of the Next Generation Poets. She has published three full-length poetry collections. Her last two collections, ’The Zoo Father’ (Seren, 2001) and ’The Huntress’ (Seren, 2005), were both shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and were both Books of the Year in the Times Literary Supplement. ’The Zoo Father’ was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and a Book of the Year in the Independent. It won a major Arts Council of England Writers’ Award and a New London Writers’ Award. A poem from the book was also shortlisted for a Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. A Spanish/English bilingual edition is published in Mexico. Her first collection was ’Heart of a Deer’ (Enitharmon, 1998), and she has co-edited the first anthology from The Poetry School, ’Tying the Song’ (Enitharmon, 2000). A prizewinning pamphlet ’The Wounded Deer – Fourteen poems after Frida Kahlo’ (Smith Doorstop) also appeared in 2005. www.pascalepetit.co.uk
was born in Warsaw more than a quarter of a century ago. He attended a French school, studied English literature, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, is now in the process of writing a doctoral thesis on literary translation theory at the University of Warwick in the UK. Bohdan is also a spoken word poet and was the only European poet to reach the finals of the Poetry Slam World Cup held in Paris in June 2007. When he is not writing poetry, analysing poetry, or translating poetry, Bohdan works as a freelance translator, engages on long-distance walking trips, and indulges his passion for capoeira, the Brazilian martial art. He hopes to learn to play bass one day.
is a translator from Spanish, specializing in contemporary Latin-American fiction. His published translations include 15 novels (by such authors like Jorge Franco, Rodrigo Fresán, Jaime Bayly, Edmundo Paz Soldán, Pablo De Santis, Santiago Roncagliolo, Tomás Eloy Martínez and others) and several short stories. He works for the Polish Book Institute, teaches contemporary Latin-American literature at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, writes criticism and reviews, and has published a book on fantasy, science fiction and magical realism in Latin-American fiction.
was born in 1972 in Prague. She studied Philosophy at Charles University, Prague, and worked as freelance translator and journalist until 2001 when she became the Literary Editor of the Czech cultural weekly Literární noviny. She is the author of three theatre plays and her prose and poetry has been published in the journal Souvislosti and literary supplement of the daily Právo. In her book Sul, ovce a kamení (Salt, Sheep and Stones, 2003), a collection of loosely linked stories set in Dalmatia and Prague, the turbulent history of the region is reflected in the lives of several generations of characters.
born in Ljubljana in 1974, graduated with a degree in Philosophy from the University of Ljubljana. He writes literary criticism and book reviews for the Slovenian National Radio, Vecher newspaper, and Literatura magazine, among others. He has published his poems in various literary magazines in Slovenia and abroad. Aleph Press published his first two collections of poetry, States (1997) and Joy in Vertigo (2002). In co-authorship with another poet (Cucnik) and a painter (Kariz), an experimental book on New York entitled Ode on Manhattan Ave (2003) came out with Sherpa Press, and his last book A Million Seconds Closer (Literatura Press, 2006) is in print. He lives, works and drinks tea in Ljubljana.
(1963) is a multitalented author in many literary forms, writing novels, poems, screenplays, dramas, children's stories and for two daily newspapers. He has an unquenchable thirst for experimentation and regularly works in a style that he has himself christened as "nano-prose". He also happens to be a passionate fisherman. He has had 13 works published to date, the more recent including Időntúli hétméteres (Seven Metres Beyond Time – novel trilogy, 2004), Ahogy a kisnyúl elképzelte (Just How The Little Rabbit Imagined Things To Be – children's stories, 2005) and Idegpályáim emlékezete (The Memory Of My Nerve Pathways – autobiographical short stories, 2006). He holds several awards and is considered one of the foremost literary figures of his generation. He lives in Szeged.
was born in 1958 in northern Romania, received his degree from Baia Mare University in 1983. He taught Romanian language and literature for six years in the small town of Ieud, the starting point for his first volume of poems, Ieudul fara iesire ("Ieud, No Way Out," Bucharest: Cartea Romaneasca, 1994,), which includes the series "15 oltetului st., room 305" and "the banquet." This volume won numerous prizes and awards, as did Porcec (a fictitious proper name), from which the "House" series is taken (Bucharest: Carta Romanesca, 1996). In September 1989, Pop moved to Bucharest as a worker in the construction of the infamous Casa Popurului (the People’s House, as the one-time dictator Ceausescu’s palace was known), an experience that inspired a series of poems about the "dormitory" conditions for unmarried workers. In April, 1990, he joined the literary magazine Luceafarul and is now senior editor for culture at Ziarul Financiar ("The Financial Journal"). His collection, Pantelimon 113 bis (Bucharest: Cartea Romanesca, 1999), won the Poetry Prize of the Union of Romanian Writers.
first travelled to Africa in 1983, returning subsequently every year, and also settling to live there for a time. She collects toys made by African children and has published articles on Africa in Slovenian and foreign press, mostly on African popular music, and also made a number of interviews with some of the greatest African musicians such as Ali Farka Toure, Kante Manfila, Remmy Ongala and others. Her literary debut Crni angel, varuh moj (Black Angel Watching Over Me, 1997) dedicated to the sub-Saharan nation Burkina Faso, became the best-selling Slovenian work of fiction and received the Zlata ptica, a prize awarded for major cultural achievements. Her following book, Barva sladke cokolade (The colour of Sweet Chocolate, 1998) a selection of newspaper articles about Western Africa, has enjoyed equal popularity. When she is not travelling in Africa (very frequently) or somewhere else (considerably less frequently), Sonja Porle lives in Oxford, Great Britain.
was born in 1974. She studied Latin philology at the University of Helsinki and is currently studying dance in Paris. She won the Finlandia Junior Prize in 2001 with her first novel Ihana meri (The Sweet Sea). The novel was subsequently published in Sweden and Denmark. The novel describes captivatingly the struggle of a young girl against anorexia.
, writer and journalist, used to be the editor of the Quaderns weekly cultural supplement of the El País daily and currently works for the newspaper Periódico de Cataluña. He has published two books of short stories Armadillo Skin (Quaderns Crema, 1998), winner of the Crítica Serra d’Or Prize, and Sad Animals (Quaderns Crema, 2000) which was well-received by both critics and the general public and inspired the film Wounded Animals (2006) by Catalan director Ventura Pons. Puntí is a writer of the quotidian who exploresthe complexity of interpersonal relationships through his ordinary characters. One of his short stories has been included in New Catalan Fiction published by Dalkey Archive Press. www.dalkeyarchive.com
was born in western Hungary, close to the border with Austria. After finishing secondary school she went to Budapest to study Hungarian and English Literature. She assisted in a library for a while and from 1982 until 1986 worked as an editor for the leading Hungarian publisher Helikon. She has been a full-time poet and translator since 1986. She received the Hungarian Attila József prize for her poetry. In 1994 the Oxford University Press published New Life, a selection from her work, translated by George Szirtes. For this translation Szirtes was awarded the European Poetry Translation Prize.
from Hungary was born in Szekszárd in 1952. She is a member of a number of organisations such as Szépírók Társasága (The Literature Society), MAOE and PEN. She has published five collections of poetry: Máshol (Elsewhere) 1985, A darázs szeme (Eye of the Wasp) 1990, Zadarnál a tenger (The Sea by Zadar) 1997, Arc poétika, 2006, Mindenhol jó (Everywhere’s Good) 2007. Her works have been published in Switzerland in German (translated by András Sándor) and she has also been published in German anthologies such as Frauenfelder Lyriktage, Poesie Agenda, Ungarische Poeten. She has been in receipt of a number of bursaries, including from the Rosenthal Institute for the Holocaust (1995).
(1970) poet and translator form French. He has published six books for poetry, including Anima (1999), Świat i Antyświat (World and Anti-world, 2003) and Kolonie (Colony, 2006), and the epic poem Dwanaście stacj (Twelve stations, 2004).
was born in 1956 in Bruges, in the Bordeaux region, in a family of Italian immigrants, and studied Greek and Literature. Her erotic novel Le Boucher (1988) published in English as The Butcher, became a bestseller translated into twenty-five languages. A prolific writer and publicist, her recent work includes the anti-racist Poupée, anale nationale (1998), the novel Moha m’aime (1999), inspired by her time spent in Morocco, and Nus devant les fantômes (2000) a fictional account of Milena Jesenská’s relationship with Franz Kafka, remembered during the winter of 1944 in the concentration camp of Ravensbrück. Alina Reyes has four sons and divides her time between Paris, the Pyrenees and various foreign locations.
was born and raised in New Quay, Ceredigion, in Wales. She graduated from Cambridge University in 1991 with degrees in Greek and Latin and is studying Creative Writing at Cardiff University. In 1996 she obtained a bursary of the Arts Council of Wales in order to write her fist collection of poems Stranded on Ithaca. In 2001 she published her second collection of poems Rockclimbing in Silk. She works as editor of poetry for the New Welsh Review and divides her time between New Quay, Paris and Oxford.
uses a range of media including sculptural and light forms with text and interventions to explore ideas about power. From 2003 - 2006 he studied Interactive arts at Manchester Metropolitan University. Since 2006 he has been a Project Manager at UHC, an ethical design cooperative. For Richardson, being an artist is a constant process of re-assessing, questioning and interrogating ideas. www.joe-richardson.co.uk
was born in Barcelona 1940. He worked as an adult teacher and for different publishing companies for over fifteen years. He has written fiction, humour, essays and poetry. He writes often for the major Barcelona newspapers and is a well known political and cultural commentator for the radio. For eight years he was the secretary of the Catalan Writers Union. He has also written on gastronomy and wine and defines himself as “a writer of oral communication”. He belongs to different organisations and has been an MP at the Catalan Parliament since 1987 for the left and the green coalition Iniciativa per Catalunya / Els Verds. One of his most satirical works Bla, Bla, Bla was published in Germany as Dicke Bevorzug by Eichborn Verlag in 1990.
is an independent designer and multidiscipline artist combining architecture with fine art and dance. She studied Architecture at Wizo Haifa Academy of Art and is now a lecturer of architecture and interior design at 6B studio, a preparatory academy for the studies of design. From 1996 Rotem danced in several of the leading contemporary dance groups in Israel such as Ido Tadmor Dance group, Fresco Dance Group and others. In 2005 she joined the art group Bodies under the instruction of Doron Polak. The group members come from different disciplines and collaborate by doing group improvisations that inspire each member to develop his own art. After processing and creating, the group exhibits the works, which usually display a variety of photography, video, fine art and more. Her art is diverse by techniques and themes, and is constantly in search of the expression of the present, sometimes by using past elements. Rotem has also become an independent art producer and curator. Recently she produced the photography exhibition in China Inside Israel and curated the exhibition Seismic Vibes at Zygota Studio.
was born in Garndolbenmaen in North Wales and has lived in Cardiff for several years. His first novel, Bingo (1985), has been described as the first post modern Welsh novel. Y Pla, his second novel, won the prize of the Arts Council of Wales in 1988 and has been translated into English, German and French. Paradwys (Paradise, 2001) is his third novel.
was born in 1958 and grew up in Stirlingshire, Scotland. A poet, editor, novelist and publisher, he is general editor of Itchy Coo, the successful Scots children’s book imprint. His novel Joseph Knight, 2003, won the Saltire Society Book of the Year and the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year awards. His latest novel, The Testament of Gideon Mack, was published by Hamish Hamilton in 2006, while the collection Voyage Of Intent: Sonnets And Essays From The Scottish Parliament, 2005, expresses the aspirations of the Scottish people after devolution.
, born in 1959 in Tortosa, is a poet, writer and translator. His collected poems Córrer la toronja (Run the Orange) were published in 2002, bringing together poetry published over twenty years, while in L’estiu de les paparres o la societat secreta dels poetes (The Summer of the Pests or the Secret Society of the Poets, 2002) he gathered some of his published and unpublished articles and essays. He has edited seven anthologies of Catalan poetry and translated W. B. Yeats and Manoel de Barros. His writing has been set to music and staged, including his latest book I pelava la taronja amb les dents (And Peeled the Orange with the Teeth, 2007) performed by the Brazilian singer Taize and musician Edu Tupi. He teaches at the Theatre Institute in Barcelona.
was born in Tallinn in 1979, where he studied Estonian linguistics at the Pedagogical University of Tallinn, and where he taught literature at a secondary school. Rooste is editor of the cultural weekly Sirp and since March 2007, he has been head of the Estonian Institute in Helsinki. In 1999, Rooste published his first collection Sonetid (Sonnets, awarded the Betti Alver Prize).
1948) was born in southern Austria. She studied Slavic and Romance languages in Vienna and in Prague. Her 1975 doctoral thesis was entitled Avant-Garde Czech Art in the 1920s: Poetics. Since 1976 she has worked freelance, teaching 20th Century Czech Literature to university students, publishing, editing and translating. (Work which she published in anthologies and periodicals appears under the name Hansen-Löve until 1987.) Her majors publications include the anthology Mähren in the series Europa erlesen (Wieser Verlag, Klagenfurt 1997), and a special edition of Lichtungen magazine entitled Literature from Brno/Brünn.
John Rowlands, Emeritus Professor of Welsh at the University of Wales, co-edited The Bloodaxe Book of Modern Welsh Poetry with the Welsh-language poet Menna Elfyn, the most comprehensive volume of its kind, which received a Poetry Book Society Recommendation in 2003. A previous editor of the literary journals Llais Llyfrau and Taliesin, and author of several critical volumes in both Welsh and English, he is also known as a novelist who broke the sexual and psychological taboos still prevalent in the Welsh-language novel of the 60s. He is the co-author of the volume Profiles, together with the late poet and critic, Glyn Jones. For further details, see the website: www.ygoedeneirin.co.uk
was born in Prague in 1976. She is editor of the cultural internet magazine Dobrá adresa. Her first poetry book Ludwig was published to general acclaim in 1999. Her second, Není nutné, abyste me navštěvoval (No need for you to visit me, 2002) was followed by a collection of short stories Noci, noci (Nights, nights, 2004). Her latest book of poems is Popel a slast (Ashes and Pleasure, 2005). Her first theatre play has won her a residency at the Royal Court Theatre in London and will be staged in Prague in 2008.
from Italy, was born in 1949 and attended the University of Bologna, where he studied modern literature. After a period of teaching, he became editor with the publisher Garzanti in Milan, and is presently the general editor of the Edizioni del Leone in Venice. Since his debut in 1972 he has published nine volumes of poetry, some of which were awarded major poetry prizes and have been translated into other languages. He has also published novels, including Preparativi per la partenza (Preparations for departure, 2003), essays, stories and translations from English.
was born in 1942 in Gudbrandsdalen. One of the most prominent contemporary Norwegian poets, he has worked in publishing and as editor of Poesi Magasin. Since his debut in 1973, he has published five collections of poetry, including his latest, Indre Krets (Inner Circle) which was awarded the prestigious Norwegian Poetryclub-Prize on its publication in 1999. Ruste is also known for his translations, notably of Ted Hughes’s Crow and Birthday Letters. Among his other translations are versions of Roald Dahl’s Dirty Beasts and Rhyme Stew, and The Little Zen Companion by David Schiller. Together with Michael Konupek he published the Norwegian translation of Poetry by Ivan Diviš in 2000. Arne Ruste lives in Son, a small fishing village near Oslo.
’s work addresses war and its manifestations in culture and ideas. She is interested in the meaning and consequences of war in history and now; how it affects our identity and sense of place; how we are shaped by it and how it is passed on through generations. Her mediums include drawing, sculpture, painting, text and video. The work is often ironic and irreverent or has a sense of uncertainty and dislocation. With this she hopes to open a space to the irrational, to other possibilities and new interpretations. All her work has a socio-political focus. It draws inspiration from DaDa and Surrealism as well as writers such as, Benjamin, Levinas, Deleuze. She has spent time with the British Territorial Army where she made casts of their arsenal in soap and entered into a transatlantic visual dialogue with a Canadian artist about war and peace involving both digital and object based exchanges. She also digitally manipulates maps, displacing certain areas and replacing them with images to explore nationhood, territory and identity. She is currently working on a body of work about contemporary war and modernism for a solo show at Leeds Met Gallery, England. Her work has been shown in the UK, Canada and Germany and is a part of a number of private collections. As a part of her practice she also programmes a small contemporary art gallery called twenty+3 projects in the front room of her house in Manchester. It has a mandate to show international and regional, non-commercial, work.
, born in Oslo in 1958, is a Swedish writer, journalist, literary critic and expert on central Europe. He writes for the culture section of the leading Stockholm-based broadsheet Svenska Dagbladet, where he was the Deputy Cultural Editor in 1995-98. The first of his four novels, De ansiktslösa (Faceless Men, 1987) brought him to the forefront of his generation. Theres (1996), a documentary novel about the German left-wing terrorist Ulrike Meinhof, received the prestigious Aftonbladet Literary Prize and was translated into several languages. Allt förgängligt är bara en bild (Only the Image Remains, 1999) is a novel set in the besieged Munich of 1919, with the contrasting main characters Rainer Maria Rilke and the dramatist-revolutionary Ernest Toller caught in the city during the brief workers’ council republic. He is also the author of essays I en annan del av staden (In a Different Part of Town, 1990) and Den kluvna spegeln (The Divided Mirror, 1991), essays and reports from Eastern Europe. Prague (No Exit, 2002) is a collection of essays about Prague’s literary heritage. Steve Sem-Sandberg divides his time between Stockholm and Prague.
(1943) is a poet and translator of Azerbaijani, Finnish, Russian and Turkish literature. She has published three collections of her own poetry and several books for children, as well as a number of translations, including poems by Nazim Hikmet, Fazil Husnu Daglarca, Yunus Emre, and prose by Aziz Nesin, Yasar Kemal and Orhan Pamuk. She has also edited and translated a selection of modern Turkish poetry with her husband, the poet Andres Ehin.
was born in Saidí, Baix Cinca, Catalonia in 1972. He teaches History of Ancient and Mediaeval Art at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. With degrees in Fine Art and in Social Anthropology and Culture from the Universitat de Barcelona, he combines his teaching with writing. He has published Els ventres de la terra [The Bellies of the Earth] (Columna, 2000), L'arbre sense tronc [The Tree With No Trunk] (Columna, 2001), Una llengua de plom [A Tongue of Lead] (Quaderns Crema, 2002) and La força de la gravetat [The Force of Gravity] (Quaderns Crema, 2006).
writes poetry, short stories and theatre plays, and teaches English at Istanbul’s Bogazici University. Her stories have been published in Turkish literary monthly Kitap-lik since 2004. and her short play The Little Green Country was staged by Theatre Dot in Istanbul in May 2007. She has translated poetry, prose and film subtitles from English and French, and is currently working on the translation of Aamer Hussein’s stories.
was born in 1956 in Iraq into an Assyrian family. He left Iraq in 1979 and in 1985 he settled in Paris, where he started the small press Gilgamesh Editions. In 1996 he moved to London, where he has lived ever since. He is the founding editor of the most popular literary website in Arabic www.kikah.com and he co-founded Banipal, Magazine of Modern Arab Literature with Margaret Obank, with whom he also edited A Crack in the Wall, poems by sixty contemporary Arab poets. He has published two collection of poetry in Arabic in 1987 and 1995. His autobiographical novel An Iraqi in Paris, published in Arabic and English in 2005 was described by the Times Literary Supplement as “a forgiving and powerful book” and The Independent as “an Arabic answer to Miller’s Tropic of Cancer”.
(1955) was born and grew up in Húsavík, north Iceland. After attending the Commercial College of Iceland in Reykjavík, he studied Icelandic language, music and acting. In 1977 he made his literary bebut with a book of poetry, Ósánar lendur (Virgin Soil). Since then he has published 12 books of poetry and translated poetry, one novel and 10 children´s books. Apart from books, he has also produced many recordings of his lyrics and songs. His most recent books of poetry are Eyðibýli (Abandoned Farms) 2004, with photographs by Nökkvi Eliasson, and Hjartaborg (Borough of the Heart) 2007. Sigurdsson lives in Reykjavík and works as a full-time writer, songwriter and publisher of music and literature.
graduated the Music Academy of Latvia and plays key instruments and guitar. She has worked mainly in the filed of folk music and children's music a soloist in the folk band Ornaments, head of a children folk studio and musical leader of the Youth Theatre of Riga. She has also worked for children's programmes of Latvian TV and radio as a script writer, composer, performer and actress. She released two solo albums, two albums of music for children, two albums of Latvian folk music and one solo disc in USA. Her songs have also been included in different music selections. She has composed music for documentary films and several theatre plays and set poetry to music. She has performed in a number of European countries, USA, Canada, Australia, Syria, Jordan and Iraq. She will perform her music composed for Turkish folk instruments to accompany the work of Latvian poets in Turkish translation.
is a singer, musician, poet, crofter and mother of four who lives in Fair Isle, the remote island midway between Shetland and Orkney, where she was born and brought up. Her poetry has appeared in various publications and been translated into several European languages. Her booklet here was published by North Idea (2005). She has had the luck and fortune to sing in beautiful places such as Reykjavík and Brittany, Orkney, Washington DC and Glasgow apart from performing at home in Fair Isle and Shetland. Ivver Entrancin Wis, (Shetland Music 2008) is her new CD of settings of Shetland poetry by various poets set to music by Lise for cello, harp, viola and voice, and sung by her, launched with Fiddlers Bid at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall at this year’s Celtic Connections festival. http://www.myspace.com/lisesinclair
is a poet, writer and translator. He belongs to the Khasi tribe and writes in both Khasi and English. His short stories have been published in leading journals in India and translated into Hindi and Bengali. Nongkynrih is a Reader in the Department of English, North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong. He has a total of five publications in Khasi and three in English besides edited volumes and translated works of poetry and short stories in both Khasi and English.
(1958, Sodankylä, Finnish Lapland) has worked in advertising and is an author of TV scripts, fantasy and science fiction whose short stories have won the Atorox Prize for Best Finnish Science Fiction six times. Her immensely successful debut fantasy novel Ennen päivänlaskua ei voi (Not Before Sundown, 2000) was awarded the Finlandia Prize and has been published in Czech, English, French, Japanese, Latvian and Swedish. An inventive mixture of science fiction, comic strip humour and Nordic folklore, Sinnisalo’s novel brings together the troll Pessi, the commercial photographer Mikael and sundry characters in a study of man's relationship to nature, as well as of the use of economic and sexual power in society and in human relationships.
is a Tamil writer and activist. Her works include more than 36 novels, 48 short novels, 150 short stories, 15 travelogues, 7 collections of articles, 13 collections of short stories, one talking book, 3 volumes of literary research, 2 volumes of anthologies, and 2 biographies. She is presently working on a project titled Knit India Through Literature. Her novels on various social issues have been filmed and serialized. Her works have been translated into many languages. She is the first writer to have narrated her story through video and audiotapes. She has also presented and anchored many talk shows. She has been honoured with Kasturi Srinivasan Award, Bharatiya Bhasha Parishad Award, Rajiv Gandhi National Integration Award and Prem Chand Rastriya Sahitya Samman for her literary achievements. She has also received many awards for her commitment in the field of social work.
(1967) lives in Bangor, Wales. Her most recent collection of poems, Remains of a Future City, was published by Seren in 2008, following The Mirror Trade in 2004. Her collaborations include Dark Wires, with Ian Davidson (West House Books, 2007) and From Here, with visual artist Simonetta Moro (Dusie, 2008). She has a PhD in Creative Writing and currently holds an AHRC Fellowship in the Creative and Performing Arts at Bangor University, where she is researching poetry and city space. She has been involved in several projects incorporating poetry, film and music, and is a member of the group Parking Non-Stop whose album Species Corridor was released by Klangbad in 2008. She is a co-editor of Skald and became Editor of the international quarterly Poetry Wales in 2008.
poet and translator from around fifteen European languages, (1936) is considered one of the greatest contemporary Latvian poets and a unique personality in Latvian literature and culture. Sentenced to seven years in a concentration camp by the Soviet authorities in 1962, his books began to appear only after his release in the 1970s, and his poems written in the concentration camp were published in the 1990s. Skujenieks is disposed to experience every moment as a witness to the external: there is no future; each moment – or poem – is pregnant with the past and the present. A master of traditional forms, his poetry is cleansed of the mundane, with extremely complex, at times audacious metaphors. In 1995, Knuts Skujenieks received the highest official State award of Latvia, Three Star Order.
(formerly Kauranen) is one of the most interesting writers to have emerged in Finland in the past two decades. Her first novel, Sonja O kävi täällän (Sonja Was Here, 1981) the story of a young daughter of Russian immigrants, shocked readers with its sexual openness and became a cult book for the young generation of the 1980s. Since then, Snellman has published over ten novels, including Ihon Aika (Time of the Skin, 1993) Pelon mantiede (The Geography of Fear, 1995) and Aura (2000). Her work has been translated into Czech, Danish, Estonian, French, German, Swedish and Turkish. Anja Snellman lives in Helsinki.
was born in 1959 in Warsaw. The latest of his six collections of poetry is Zoom (2000) and his Selected Texts are being published in 2001. He has worked as editor and translator with the magazine Literatura na Swiecie. Among the authors he has translated are John Ashbery, Elizabeth Bishop, John Cage, Ronald Firbank, Paul de Man and Ezra Pound. He lives in Warsaw and occasionally teaches American Poetry at Warsaw University.
was born in 1957 in Limerick, Ireland. She has a degree in Creative Writing and works currently at the Limerick prison where she leads courses to eliminate illiteracy. Her first novel God on the Wall (1997) has been translated into French. White Lie is her second novel.
(1975) studied Russian language and literature and Librarianship in Ljubljana. She published two poetry books, Kutine (Quinces, 2003) and Lahko se zgodi karkoli (Anything can happen, 2007). Her writing regularly appears in Slovene literary magazines as well as abroad, and her poems have been translated into eight languages and included in two anthologies. Apart from translating poetry from English, Russian and Serbian (Robert Hass, Ana Ristović), she also writes film reviews and used to have a literary "chat-show" in Ljubljana’s night club Daktari.
was born in Shkodra in 1975. After her studies in Albanian and International Literature she specialised in Public Relations. She graduated with a Master Degree in Counseling and Psychology (University of Sheffield: City Liberal Studies, Thessaloniki , Greece). Currently she is working as editor in Chief in Psychology Magazine. She is also Lecturer at Tirana University for the Faculty of Psychology. She has published several poetry and prose books.
lives in Vic near Barcelona and writes in Catalan. His poetry tests the limits of language and grammar, restoring meaning to language that has become empty with everyday usage. He also works with visual artists, writing about their work or combining text with images. He is the editor of poetry review Reduccions and of the review of contemporary culture Transversal, and co edits a poetry series Jardins de Samarcanda and of poetry anthologies Calaise de versos (A Drawer of Poetry). Among his recent books are Quadern de port and Quadern de bosc (Notebook of the Port and Notebook of the Forest) I si no neva? (What if it Doesn’t Snow?)
poet, writer and translator was born in Transylvania (Romania) and moved to Hungary in 1987. She studied English and Hungarian literature at the University of Budapest and received her PhD in English Renaissance literature in 2007. She was 23 when her first volume of poetry appeared, and received the Petőfi Prize (1996), founded for promising young poets. She has since published four more volumes of poetry and has received several literary prizes. She has translated many poems and lyrics, essays, novels, drama, radio plays and librettos, and writes essays, newspaper articles and reviews. She also worked for the British Council as a co-leader of a translators’ workshop in Budapest (2000-2004), as the co-editor of the homepage of the Hungarian Book Foundation and as a film critic and translator for the journal CINEMA (1997-2007); she is currently the poetry editor of the literary journal The Hungarian Quarterly which publishes Hungarian literature and essays in English.
is a leading figure of the eastern European poetical avant-garde and the most prominent Slovenian writer. He has a degree in Art History and before devoting himself to poetry, he worked as a curator and conceptual artist. To date he has published thirty-one books of poetry in Slovenian and has received many honours and awards, including the Preseren Prize, the Jenko Prize, the Pushcart Prize, a visiting Fulbright to Columbia University, and the University of Iowa International Writing Program Fellowship. He has served as Cultural Attaché to the Slovenian Embassy in New York, and is currently living in Berlin on a DAAD scholarship. Besides having his work appear in numerous journals internationally, he has had eight books published in English translation, including four collections of selected poetry The Selected Poems of Tomaz Salamun (1988); The Shepherd, the Hunter (1992); The Four Questions of Melancholy (1997); and Feast (2000), as well as Homage to Hat and Uncle Hugo and Eliot (1997) and A Ballad for Metka Krasovec (2001). He is married to painter Metka Krasovec.
was born in Slovenia and lives in Barcelona. She has translated various Slovenian and Serbian authors into Catalan (Makarovič, Jančar, Kiš, Pahor, Mozetič) and Catalan authors into Slovenian (Calders, Foix, Moncada, Todó), and has also published numerous literary studies in specialist reviews in Spain (Els Marges, L’Espill, Pasajes) and in Slovenia (Nova revija, Literatura, Dialogi). She is the author of L’estirp de la solitud (Barcelona, Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 2003, and Ljubljana, Literatura, 2005), which won the Josep Carner prize for Literary Theory, and L’atzar de la lluita. El concepte d’Europa Central al llarg del segle XX (Valencia, Afers, 2005 and Maribor, Aristej, 2005).
was born in 1952 in Copenhagen. She made her literary debut in 1981 and has published eight collections of poetry, edited two anthologies of contemporary Danish poetry and written two plays. English versions of her poems have appeared in more than forty literary journals in the UK, the US and Canada. A book of poems, Spring Tide translated by Anne Born, was published in England by Forest Books and her poems have been included in Literary Olympians (1992) and in The Nordic Poetry Festival Anthology (1993) and translated into over ten other languages. Among many grants and awards, Pia Tafdrup received the three-year scholarship for authors from the Danish State Art Foundation in 1984. She is a member of The Danish Academy, the Danish PEN Centre and The Danish Language Council.
(novelist, fiction writer, philosopher, editor; Russia) graduated from Novosibirsk State University, first from the Department of Linguistics, and then from the Department of Philosophy. She lectures on social philosophy at St. Petersburg State University, from where she received her PhD. She also works as a freelance columnist, and is regularly published in newspapers and both academic and non-academic journals. Taratuta’s Russian-language publications include works of fiction (‘One Hundred and One Minutes,’ 2007, ‘The General Hygiene of Dr. Andreas,’ forthcoming, ‘Fishes and Frogs,’ forthcoming), and an academic text titled ‘A Philosophy of Virtual Reality,’( 2007).
(1973) is a writer and columnist in Reykjavik, Iceland. Her debut collection of poetry, Blálogaland (Land of Blue Flames) was published in spring 1999, followed the year after by a collection of road-poetry, Hnattflug (Circumnavigation), which was voted best poetry book of the season by staff-members of Icelandic bookstores. As well as poetry she has written dramatic and prose texts, and her first novel, Sólar saga (The Story of Sun), received the Tomas Gudmundsson Literary Prize in 2002. Her poetry has been translated into several languages and published in anthologies in Germany, Sweden and Italy. A bilingual collection of her poems in Icelandic and English (translated by Bernard Scudder), To bleed straight, was published by Forlagið in 2008.
(1962) is an outstanding writer and essayist. Her greatest success was the novel Prehistory and Other Times (1996). She was shortlisted to the Nike Literary Prize, awarded by the readers of Gazeta Wyborcza. Other awards for her work include the Koscielski Foundation Prizes. She has published the novel House of Day, House of Night (1998) and two collections of short stories: Playing on a Multitude of Drums (2001) and The Last Stories (2004). As a master of the short form and a devotee of C.G.Jung and arcane knowledge. Olga Tokarczuk's prose can bring new meanings into light from the depiction of apparently lifeless things. The writing itself is a creation taking place before the reader's eyes. Mythic meanings are intertwined with psychological ones and the reader discovers the world anew; a world, which seemed to be already known and domesticated. Her last novel, Bieguni (Runners, 2007) won the Nike Literary > Prize (2008) and was also awarded by the readers of Gazeta Wyborcza.
was born in 1963 in Murska Sobota, Slovenia. She graduated in Sociology in Ljubljana at The Faculty of Social Sciences and completed her MA in Gender Anthropology at The Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis, Ljubljana Postgraduate School of Humanities. She lives and works in Ljubljana as a writer, translator, lesbian activist, organiser and publicist. She published 4 short stories collections Pod ničlo (Bellow Zero), Na svojem dvorišču (In One's Own Backyard), Vzporednice (Parallels) and Česa nisem nikoli razumela na vlaku (What I've Never Understood on the Train), 2 novels Ime mi je Damjan (My Name is Damjan) and Tretji svet (Third World), a play and 2 non-fiction books about lesbian movement in Slovenian and a book about lesbian literature. She was rewarded with a national Prešeren's Fund Prize for the best Slovenian fiction book of 2006. Her books and short stories are translated in German, Serbian, Czech, Slovakian, Macedonian, English, Italian, Bulgarian and Dutch language. Suzana Tratnik has translated several books of British and American fiction and non-fiction and plays, including authors such as Judith Butler, Adrienne Rich, Leslie Feinberg, Michael Cunningham, Jackie Kay, Mary Dorcey, Katy Watson, Edna Mazya, Mary Dorcey and Ian McEwan.
was born in Reykjavik, Iceland, on 14th December 1966. He started playing piano at a young age. Ástvaldur graduated from The FIH music school in Reykjavik in 1988 and from The Berklee College of Music in Boston 1991. After graduation he became active on the music scene in Reykjavik and played with many of Iceland’s leading bands, ranging from pop and rock to jazz, including the Reykjavik Big Band for 10 years. A few years ago Ástvaldur picked up the accordion, which has taken up more and more of his time. Currently he plays with the folk music group Bardukha, experimenting with East European music inheritance, blended with jazz and improvised music. Ástvaldur has always been a passionate teacher and has worked in many music schools in Reykjavik. He founded Tónheimar (“The world of music”) which has become one of the most popular music schools in Iceland. In Tónheimar, the main emphasis is on improvisation, playing by ear and encouraging students to be spontaneous and creative. In 2005, Ástvaldur wrote and published a music book which has been very popular and has been taught in many music schools in Iceland. http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=95508657
was born in 1970 in Ondarroa, in the province of Vizcaya in Spain 's Basque Country. After receiving his university degree in Basque philology, he has done postgraduate work in Comparative Literature in Trento, Italy, and has worked as a teacher, translator, and scriptwriter. He has published essays, stories, poems, and comics, and has written lyrics for many Basque musical groups. He has translated the poetry of Raymond Carver, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Mahmud Darwish, and Wislawa Szymborska, among others. In collaboration with the musicians Mikel Urdangarin and Bingen Mendizabal, he worked on a multimedia project - combining poetry/prose, video, music, and oral history - that was documented in the CD-book Bar Puerto. His theatre piece Ekidazu has been produced by groups Oskorri and Kukubiltxo. His first collection of poems, Bitartean heldu eskutik (Meanwhile Hold Hands), won Spain 's 2001 Premio de la Crítica, and has been translated into Spanish and Portuguese.
(1954) was raised in Reykjavík, studied history at the University Lund Sweden 1973-74 and art, history in Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende Guanajuato Mexico 1977-78 and in history at the University of Iceland 1983. Since these studies she has been engaged in writing and is the author of 17 books on subjects such as the history of Reykjavík (1870-1950); theater history (1900-1950); church history (19th century); historical biography (18th -19th century - see review in L’Atelier de Roman 1992 by Rafnsson) and biography (20th century). She has published two books of poetry, six novels (see review in World Literature Today summer 1995 and summer 1998) and scripts for radio and TV, including docudrama.
was born in 1964. Poet, translator and lecturer in Czech Philology at the Catholic University in Budapest, he is the author of six collections of poetry, two collections of short stories and co-author of a book of essays A Kafka-Paradigma (1993). He has translated major Czech poets into Hungarian, including Brezina, Deml, Holan, Holub, Seifert, Kolar, Julis and Wernisch. He has received several prestigious awards both for his translations and writing, including the Füst Milan Prize and Tibor Déry Award. His own poetry has been translated into sixteen languages and was included in the Anthology of Living Hungarian Poetry (1997). He lives in Budapest.
was born in Riga in 1979, has studied Journalism and is now doing a course in History and Management of Culture. One of the youngest generation of Latvian poets, his first collection Ledlauzi (Icebreakers) was published by Nordik in 2001, and his poetry has been translated into English, Russian, Ukrainian and Estonian. He is the co-editor of the literary magazine Luna.
was born in Vila Nova de Foz Côa in Portugal in 1962. He taught Literature and Linguistics at the University of Évora from 1983 to 1987, the year he began to devote himself entirely to being an editor and journalist. He has worked for a number of newspapers and magazines, taken part in radio programmes and has written and presented several programmes for television. He was the editor of the magazine Grande Reportagem, and he is presently the Director of Casa Fernando Pessoa, devoted to several activities connected with the promotion of literature and particularly poetry. He has mainly published fiction and poetry, but also travel books and a play. His poetry is translated into Hebrew, Catalan and Castilian and his novels are published in Germany (Lübbe), Brazil and Italy.
was born in Medgidia, Constanta county, in Romania in 1981. She graduated from the Faculty of Letters in Bucharest and has worked as a journalist since 2001. She is an editor for the daily newspaper “Averea”. In 2002 she published her first volume “The confessions of the distinguished lady m.” in the “Carmen” underground series initiated by Un Cristian. She published the volume “Pages” in the same year and her second volume, “Fissures”, was issued by “Pontica” in 2003. In 2005 Elena Vladareanu was awarded a creative scholarship in Berlin. Her work features in a new anthology of Romanian poetry in English translation, “No Longer Poetry: new Romanian Poetry”, HeavenTree Press, 2007.
was born in Rome in 1957. He studied Economics and Philosophy at the University of Bristol and holds a PhD in Politics and History from the University of Oxford. Since his debut Somnambulations (1983) he has published six collections of poetry, including The Angel of History (1999), which was short-listed for the State Poetry Prize, and After the End of Beauty (2003). He has also published a collection of thoughts and aphorisms on poetry and poetics entitled, The Other Place (1994). Apart from being a poet, writer and editor, Haris Vlavianos is also a distinguished translator into Greek of the works of well-known writers such as Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound, Michael Longley, Wallace Stevens, John Ashbery, e.e. cummings, Carlo Goldoni, William Blake, Zbigniew Herbert and Fernando Pessoa. He is the editor of the influential literary Greek journal Poese (Poetry) and of the Greek domain of the Poetry International web site www.poetryinternational.org. He is Professor of History and History of Ideas at the American College of Greece and teaches Translation Theory at the European Centre for Translation in Athens. In his latest poetry book (Vacations on reality, Patakis, 2009) Vlavianos mobilises a multitude of narrative methods: discourses among poets, philosophical musings, language games, intertextual intricacies and examples from the visual arts. In exploring the ever changing relationship between poetry and reality.
, a poet and translator, was born in 1941 in Maribor, Slovenia, and studied Psychology and Philosophy. In1980 she joined the theatre group Tespisov voz and began publishing poetry. She is the author of five collections including White Eurydice (1984), Anima (1990), White Tree (2000) and Description of a Painting, which won the Jenko Prize in 2002. She has translated, among others, Goethe’s Faust, Wedekinds’ Lulu and Büchner’s Woyzeck.
is a prize-winning author of both fiction and poetry. A full-time writer, he was born in Cork in 1955, where he still lives. He graduated from University College Cork in Philosophy and English, and is one of two fiction writers to emerge from the group of writers that developed around the English Department there in the late seventies. His fourth novel This Is The Country was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize 2005 and shortlisted for The Irish Book Awards and the Young Mind Prize. His work has been translated into Italian, Portuguese, Serbian, Latvian and Dutch. His fiction has been published in Ireland, England and the USA. His poetry and fiction have won numerous accolades, including The Patrick Kavanagh and Sean O’Faoláin Awards, and ‘Surrender’ was shortlisted for the Raymond Carver Prize. He has published four novels and two collections of poetry. His stories were collected as No Paradiso in 2006. He has also written for children. He reviews for The Irish Times and is an occasional contributor to other journals. homepage.eircom.net/~williamwall/williamwall/Welcome.html
has worked in the information field since 1975 in a number of countries, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the USA. She began her library career at Cairo University Library, taught librarianship in the first women’s library program in Saudi Arabia and was the Dean of Libraries at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago from 1988 until 2004. Dr. Wastawy was appointed in July 2004 as the first Chief Librarian for the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Dr. Wastawy has been the recipient of many awards, a Peace Fellowship and a Fulbright Scholarship and has written and spoken extensively on library and information management issues.
translates contemporary Polish poetry into English. Her translations have appeared in, among others, Poetry Review, Poetry London, Poetry Wales, Modern Poetry in Translation, Poetry Ireland Review, Edinburgh Review, Acumen, Magma, Brand, The Wolf, Chicago Review, as well as in various anthologies (most recently New European Poets, Graywolf Press, 2008, and Six Polish Poets, Arc, 2009). She also translates from the English. She regularly reviews poetry translations from Central and Eastern Europe. She is a contributing editor to Poetry Wales. In co-operation with the British Council, Polish Book Institute and Polish Cultural Institute she has organized translation workshops, seminars and poetry readings in Kraków and in the UK to promote contemporary poetry in translation. She also translates from the English. She co-edited (together with Marcin Baran and Anna Skucińska) Carnivorous Boy Carnivorous Bird. Poetry from Poland: A bilingual edition (Brookline, MA: Zephyr Press, 2004). Her Salt Monody is a selection of fifty-three translations from Marzanna Bogumiła Kielar (Zephyr Press, 2006). She co-edits Przekładaniec, a refereed journal of literary translation published in Kraków, Poland, where she teaches literary translation, contemporary poetry in English and cognitive poetics at the English Department of the Jagiellonian University.
was born in Glasgow in 1952. From 1973 to 1985 he lived in Italy and from 1990 to 2005 was on the staff of the Department of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow. Today he lives in Budapest and writes full time. Of his four novels in English, two have received Scottish Arts Council awards. His first collection of poems in Gaelic Uirsgeul / Myth (1991) won a Saltire prize. An Tràth Duilich / The Difficult Time followed in 2002. Dealbh Athar / Portrait of a Father will appear in Gaelic and Irish in 2008, to be followed in 2009 by a collected volume, An Daolag Shìonach / The Chinese Beetle. Christopher is also the author of Modern Scottish Poetry (2004) and the editor of Gendering the Nation (1995). He has translated poetry from a wide range of languages into both English and Gaelic. www.aboutchristopherwhyte.com
was born in Namaqualand, South Africa, and attended the University of Western Cape where she was later invited to lecture following the abolition of apartheid. She has lived in the UK for the past twenty-five years and lectures at the English Department at Strathclyde University, Glasgow. Her first book, a collection of loosely linked stories You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town (1987) brought her immediate acclaim and was re-issued in the Virago Modern Classics series. Her novel, David's Story (2001), awarded the prestigious South African Sunday Times Fiction Prize, “brings to life the history of the aboriginal Griqua people in a multi-layered reflection on the meanings of freedom and bondage in South Africa”. Her work has been translated into Dutch, German, French, Italian and Swedish and her short stories have been included in numerous magazines and anthologies such as The Penguin Book of Contemporary African Short Stories and The Heinemann Book of South African Short Stories.
lives in north Wales and works as a lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Wales in Bangor, teaching, researching and writing on issues of equal opportunity. In her spare time she is involved in a number of community projects aimed at creating a space for the black people of Wales. She is the main editor of A Tolerant Nation? Exploring Ethnic Diversity in Wales. In her memoir Sugar & Slate (2001) a second generation black Briton travels from Wales, the home of her white mother, to Africa and the Caribbean in search of her estranged father, the Guyanese archaeologist, painter and novelist, Denis Williams. What begins as a journey of discovery becomes a confrontation with herself and with the idea of Wales and Welshness.
is a visual artist from Turkey, based in Berlin. Her background in urban planning, art and design results in a wide-ranging artistic practice, including ceramics, installation and community projects. She explores ideas relating to the feeling of belonging between individuals and their society. This exploration has resulted in artist projects with forced migrants in Istanbul and Diyarbakir. She is currently working on her PhD thesis –Temporary Public Art Projects – in Universitat der Kunsten, Berlin.
was born in Osaka, Japan in 1959 and grew up mostly in Hiroshima. He started writing poetry in his late teens and published his first collection of poetry A Laughing Bug in 1991. Since then he has published seven collections, including Muddy Calendar (Co-authored with Inuo Taguchi, 2008), Starboard of My Wife (2006), Golden Hour (2004). He won several literary prizes such as Hagiwara Sakutaro Award and his poems have been translated into more than ten languages including two books of Romanian and Serbian translations. In addition to poetry, Yasuhiro writes essays, literary criticism, and translates poetry from English and German to Japanese. His latest book of translation will be Kid by Simon Armitage to be published in Japan later this year. Since 2006, Yasuhiro has been National Editor of Poetry International Web – Japan, introducing the contemporary Japanese poetry through English translations. (http://japan.poetryinternational.org/). He has also recently taken part in the launch of a new poetry magazine “Beagle” in Japan as an editor. He is an avid street photographer and his works can be seen in the following web gallery: http://web.mac.com/yyotsumoto/iWeb/Site/Bosnia.html
studied Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh College of Art and History of Art at The University of Edinburgh. After graduating she joined artists’ group protoacademy, and in 2003 completed the postgraduate Critical Studies Program between Malmö Art Academy and Rooseum, Malmö, Sweden. In 2007 with James Hutchinson, she set up The Salford Restoration Office, a curatorial practice that develops projects with cultural institutions in Manchester, addressing questions of artistic context and policy, and generating discussion surrounding the conditions art institutions and artists in the city find themselves operating within. The Salford Restoration Office worked with Dan Shipsides to make Radical Architecture for Castlefield Gallery, and developed The Whitworth Cabinet with The Whitworth Art Gallery. In addition to the activities made in partnership with institutions, they also work with artists active in the region on: Centrifuge (with Imogen Stidworthy, Dirk Fleischmann, Manchester Metropolitan University); and Reading Capital, a reading group dedicated to reading Karl Marx’s Capital. They are currently developing projects with Katya Sander and Artur Zmijewski.
graduated in Comparative Literature and Slovene from Ljubljana University. He worked briefly as reporter and has been a free-lance writer since 1986. He has published two books for children and young readers, a collection of short stories and four novels, including Volčije noči (Wolf Nights), which won the Kresnik award for the best Slovenian Novel in 1997 and was published in German translation by Drava Verlag.
was born in 1960 in Luck in the Ukraine and graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Kiev. A poet, novelist and author of literary studies, she published four collections of poetry, Conductor of the Last Candle (1990) The Hoarfrost of May (1985) Hitchiking (1994) and A Kingdom of Fallen Statues (English version, Toronto, 1996). Her novel An Extraterrestial Woman was serialized in the Ukrainian journal The Present in 1992. Her novel An Outdoor Research of Ukrainian Sex (1996) will be shortly published in English and Czech. Oksana Zabuzhko lives in Kiev.
was born in Prague, studied in the USA, and has been living in Barcelona since the early 1980s. Writer, translator and critic, she has taught at the Universitat Autònoma, and writes for numerous papers and cultural magazines. She has translated more than forty books of Russian and Czech fiction and poetry into Spanish and Catalan - Dostoevsky, Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Babel, Hašek, Capek, Seifert, Havel, Škvorecký, Kundera and Hrabal – and has received several prestigious awards for her work as translator. Her biography of the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal V rajské zahrade trpkých plodu (The Bitter Fruit of the Garden of Delights, 1997) has so far been translated into seven languages. Her trilogy of novels was published in Czech as Grave cantabile in 2000 and in Catalan as La dona dels cent somriures (The Woman of a Hundred Smiles) in 2001.
was born in Budapest in 1970. Poet and prose writer, publisher and multi-media artist, his volume of poetry Lepel alatt ugrásra kész szobor (A Statue Under a White Sheet Ready to Jump) was published in 1993. His short stories draw on his travels from Sydney to New York, and from Cape Town to St. Petersburg, and his “dictionary novel” Az utolsó Ablak-Zsiráf (The Last Window Giraffe, 1998) is based on a Hungarian children’s picture primer and describes growing up in Hungary and eastern Europe in the 1970s and 1980s in a humorous, playful way, reflecting the previous regime’s oversimplifications and treatment of citizens as children. The novel was translated into 11 languages, adapted for the radio and made into a multimedia CD-ROM in four languages, which toured 25 countries.
was born in Lisbon in 1961 and obtained his doctorate in Literature from Nova University where he now lectures in Portuguese Studies. His first novel, Hotel Lusitano (1987) a story of two American “innocents” in Lisbon, became a cult book for the young generation of Portuguese. His scripts for street theatre performances and happenings, and especially his contributions to the satirical TV programme Viper Tongue, have won him considerable popularity as an agent provocateur. His other books include the “millennium” novel Apocalipse Nau, 1996, A Espera (The Wait, 1998) a novella about whaling set in the Azores, and the graphic novel A Arte Suprema (The Supreme Art, 1997). His latest novel O Supplente (The Substitute) was published in 2000.
(1944 - 2001 Riga) studied psychology and social sciences in Leningrad and Moscow. A poet, translator from English and Russian and literary critic, he worked in Latvian television, was editor of the literary weekly L&M and director of the Latvian National Museum of Literature, Music and Theatre. He published six books of poetry, a book for children, translations and numerous articles of literary criticism. His last collection Forbidden Psalms reflects the conflicts faced by his generation in a time of political turmoil of recent years. He was president of Nordic/Tapals Publishers, a press with a strong international and poetry list, from 1992 until 2001.