Tom Chivers is a writer, editor and live literature producer. Born 1983 in South London, he currently lives in the East End. In Spring 2008 he was the first ever Poet in Residence at The Bishopsgate Institute. His books include How To Build A City (Salt Publishing, 2009), The Terrors (Nine Arches Press, 2009) and, as editor, the anthologies Generation Txt and City State: New London Poetry (Penned in the Margins, 2006 & 2009). In September 2009 Radio 4 broadcast his documentary about the poet Barry MacSweeney. He is Director of the live literature producer and small press Penned in the Margins, and co-Director of London Word Festival. Tom has performed his work across London and at festivals in Berlin, Newcastle and Dublin. Tom is currently involved with the Word Express project for young writers and translators in South East Europe, visit www.word-express.org to find out more.
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 TumĆĄie brieĆŸi (The Dark Deer), published in Latvia âs 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 âUnited Intimacyâ.
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 AutĂČnoma 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 TrĂ nsit entre dos vols (Transit between two flights, 2001), and MĂșsica 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 lâoca (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.
is an Iraqi poet and publisher, born in al-Samawa, Iraq, in 1956. He has lived in Cologne, Germany, since 1980, where he founded, in 1983, the publishing house, Al-Kamel Verlag, now well-known for its daring and distinctive quality of titles that numbered in that anniversary year almost 200. Seven collections of his own poetry have been published, some in German. He has also translated the poets al-Sayab, Adonis, Mahmoud Darwish, Sargon Boulus, Saadi Youssef, Unsi al-Hajj into German.
(1975) earned an MA cum laude for her thesis 'Irony in the Short Stories of Yusef Idris'. She has published three books of poetry and is currently working on her PhD dissertation on 'The narrator in the novels of Nagib Mahfouz'.
(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 1994â2002 â 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. AliĆĄanka is a member of the Lithuanian Writers Unionâs Board and Lithuanian PEN centre. He has published five books of poetry and two essay collections. In 1992, Equinox (1991) won the Zigmas GÄlÄ Award. The Return of Dionysus (2001) has received the Lithuanian Culture Ministry Award. AliĆĄanka has translated poetry by WisĆawa Szymborska, Carolyn ForchĂ©, Dannie Abse, Bernardine Evaristo, Jerome Rothenberg, Desmond Egan, Jacek PodsiadĆo, and others. AliĆĄanka 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. AliĆĄanka 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.
was born in Edessa, northern Greece, in 1970. He was raised in Thessaloniki, where he now lives. He studied History and Archaeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Masters and PhD in Art History) and worked as an art curator at the Thessaloniki Centre of Contemporary Art. He is currently a teacher of literature and a translator. He has published five poetry collections: Dormitory: Nine nocturnal parables (1999), House of ice (2001), Thirtythree(2003), Summer indoors + six proofs of capability (2005), 4-D: Four-Dimensional Poems(2006). He has also published two collections of short-stories: Donât eat me (Kastaniotis, Athens 2005) and Charybdiâs Dog (Kastaniotis, 2008). His theatrical plays The washbasin (2007) and Blom! (2008) were staged in Thessaloniki. His poems and short-stories have been translated in five languages (English, French, Italian, Russian, Serbian and Persian), and have been included in anthologies, catalogues and literary journals in America, Canada, England, Sweden, Italy and Russia. He has performed in several poetry readings at international festivals such as the third Stockholm Poetry Festival and in the 53rd Venice Biennale.
born in 1964, in Fez, Morocco, has been living in Lyon since 1989, where he participates in the Association-Edition PoĂ©sie conferences. âMohammed El Amraoui writes, speaks, and reads French. / Mohammed El Amraoui writes, speaks, and reads Arab. / Mohammed El Amraoui invents his own images, and syntactical and grammatical strategies. / Mohammed El Amraoui avoids conventional words; he has created âa fire at the tip of the tongueâ and discovered that the âsun is a bit weakâ.â [B. BretonniĂšre] He has been the editor of the literary journal Les Cahiers de PoĂ©sie-rencontres since 2001, a journal that has also published poetry by Oliver Friggieri and Adrian Grima.
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 SzymborskaŽs 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 JosĂ© 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 EtopĂa 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.
(1981) published his first novel A Long Cellar with a Low Ceiling Making You Crouch with Suad Al-Sabah Publishers in 2003. That same year, his short story collection Blue in a Sad Way was published by the Higher Council for Culture in Cairo. In 2007, his second novel Repeated Stopping was published by Dar Merit, followed by his third, The Italian's Bed, in 2008. He has won seven literary awards, including the Suad Al-Sabah Award for the Novel, and the Higher Council for Cultureâs Award for the Short Story in 1999 and 2004. He also won the Higher Council for Culture Award for the Novel in 2004.
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), GĆŒejjer (Inizjamed, 2000), FâKull Belt Hemm Kantuniera (Inizjamed, 2003), Ktieb għall-ÄŠruq (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 CĂșirt 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-ÄŠadra (âThe Green Lineâ), 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.
was born in Diyarbakır, but at a young age moved with her parents to Kumkapı, Istanbul. She studied at the Surp Mesropyan Armenian primary school and at the ĂemberlitaĆ High School. Ăelik, who worked as both a columnist and editor for Agos, the Turkish-Armenian Istanbul based paper, has also published stories and interviews in various journals. In 1999 she won honourable mention in the YaĆar Nabi Nayır Short Story Awards. Her short stories are collected in three books: Kum Saatinde Kumpkapı ( The Hour Glass of Kumkapı , 2000), Yılanın Yolu ( The Snakeâs Trail, 2003) and Kaçak Yolcu ( Stowaway, 2005).
was born in Tallinn, Estonia in 1962 and studied biology at Tartu University. He started to publish poetry at the same time and his first poetry book came out in 1985, the second and the third during next five years. He then published his first novel The Border State, and continued to publish fiction and poetry including the collection Measure in 1997. During recent years he has written diary-like prose and diary-like poetry, even a diary in poems, The Spring and the Summer and (2009). He has also translated French authors such as Mauriac, Baudelaire and Proust into Estonian. His latest published translation is a book of poems by Fernando Pessoa (Alvaro de Campos). Having lived for a long time on the Estonian island of Hiiumaa, he is now staying in the centre of Estonia, always in the countryside.
was born in SzĂ©kesfehĂ©rvĂĄr in Hungary in 1980. He studied Hungarian and English. He has published three poetry collections, Istenek vagytok (You are gods),1999, A felvezetĆ kör (Opening round), 2001, LevegĆvĂ©tel (Respiration), 2007. His poems have been published in three anthologies - VerskarĂĄcsony (Poetic Christmas), 2001, SzĂ©p versek (Beautiful Poems), 2006 and 2007, and have received critical acclaim in many Hungarian journals and newspapers. The main themes of Babiczkyâs 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, ÄernĂœ beran (Black Ram, 2000) and Kudy ĆĄel andÄl (Where The Angel Trod, 2003) and two collections of short stories. The first, MoĆŸnĂĄ ĆŸe odchĂĄzĂme (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.
Poet and translator IngmÄra Balode was born in 1981 and graduated from the Riga College for Applied Art and the Latvian Academy of Culture. Balode works as a literary editor for the Web portal ÂŒ Satori (www.satori.lv), where she regularly publishes her own poetry and her translations of other poetsâ works. Balodeâs poems, stories, and articles first appeared in the Latvian cultural press in the mid-1990s. Her first volume of poetry, âLedenes, ar kurÄm var sagriezt mÄliâ (Hard Candy that Can Cut Your Tongue), was published in 2007. Balodeâs poetry has been translated into the English, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Polish, and Czech; she translates fiction mostly from the Polish and English, and has translated poetry from the Czech, Slovakian, and Russian. To date, her most important published translations have been by the Polish author Dorota MasĆowskaâs novel âWojna polsko-ruska pod flagÄ biaĆo-czerwonÄ â (English title: Snow White and Russian Red) (2007), Hanna Krallâs novel âZdÄ ĆŒyÄ przed Panem Bogiemâ (English title: Shielding the Flame) (2005), selection of Adam Zagajewskiâs poetry âSveĆĄÄ skaistumÄâ (2009) as well as her translations of the poetry of E. E. Cummings, which have appeared in the cultural press. In addition to her work as an editor and translator, Balode has also hosted the weekly poetry program BronhÄ«ts on Radio Naba. In 2004 and 2005, she helped to organize the Annual Poetry Readings. Balode is a member of the Latvian Writers Union and has participated in various international literary events, including the First World Congress of Translators of Polish Literature, in 2005, and the Prague International Poetry Festival, in 2007, and poetry translation project âMetropoeticaâ since 2008.
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/Madogâs 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 MĂČr 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.
, born in Beirut in 1966, is a Lebanese journalist and poet. He grew up as the son of an SSNP fighter who himself took up arms during the civil war. Dissatisfied with the dishonest and violent culture of militancy, he turned to poetry and literature to heal. His book Yasser Arafat Looked at me and Smiled, which was published in English and Arabic in 2007 and translated into French, is a testimony and a call against war. He has published four poetry collections and has been awarded the Youssef al-Khal Poetry Prize. Bazzi writes for the al-Mustaqbal daily.
was born in 1979 in Sarajevo. She has a degree in Comparative Literature, and an MA in Human Rights and Democracy. She spent a year in Germany on a DAAD grant studying German and Media at Phlipps University in Marburg. She has travelled widely and has participated in a number of literary encounters in Bosnia and abroad. In 2003 she spent four months travelling in the USA together with other young writers from conflict-ridden countries and has gave readings from San Francisco to Boston. She works as a journalist in the culture section of Slobodna Bosna weekly, the largest circulation Bosnian daily, where she has a literary column. Adisa BaĆĄiÄ has published two poetry collections, Havaâs Sentences (1999) and Trauma Market (2004). Her poetry and literary criticism have been published in leading magazines in the region, including Sarajevske sveske, Novi pogledi and Treci trg. Her story "To Survive Hitchhiking"was awarded at UNESCO competition for best short stories of young writers from South-Eastern Europe, while her second book Trauma market was selected for best poetry collection at International Publisher's Encounters âVoyage to the Center of Europeâ in Pazin, Croatia, awarded with a one-month fellowship in Graz, Austria.
was born in 1942 in Ăatalca near Ä°stanbul 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 YaÄmurâŠNe Ćiirler (Neither Rain⊠Nor Poems, 1976), KuĆatmada (During the Siege, 1978), Mustafa Suphi Destan (Epic of Moustapha Suphi, 1979), DörtlĂŒkler (Quatrains, 1980), Bebeklerin Ulusu Yok (Babies donât have Nations, 1988), Sevgilimsi (You are my Beloved, 1993), AĆk Ä°ki KiĆiktir (Love is two Person Thing, 1999), Yeni AĆka 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 AĆŸ umĆeĆĄ, nikdo uĆŸ ti nebude chtĂt 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 ZaloĆŸba. 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 koĆŸ, 1990, published in English by Northwestern University Press as Skinwaps in 1998 and Zakon ĆŸelje (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 Writersâ 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 prĂĄce (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 VnitrozemĂ (The Interior) and will be published in English translation by the poet Justin Quinn in 2008 by Seren.
(1944 - 2007) was born in Iraq into an Assyrian family. Poet, short-story writer and translator, he is considered one of the most influential voices in contemporary Arab poetry. He started publishing in 1961, contributing to the ground-breaking Shiâr [Poetry] magazine, based in Beirut. He left Iraq in 1968, going to Beirut, and in 1969 to the USA, settling in San Francisco. He published six poetry collections and translated many British and American poets into Arabic. A study of his life and work, Sargon Boulus: his Life and Writing (in Assyrian and Arabic), was published in Baghdad, 1999. He lived in the USA and was consulting editor of Banipal, Magazine of Modern Arab Literature. A selection of his poems in English translation was published posthumously by Banipal Books under the title Knife Sharpener in 2009.
born 1978, is a film director of fiction and documentary films, a writer, lecturer in film studies and the artistic coâdirector of the international womenâs film festival in Israel. She wrote and directed three short films â The Last Supper, 2004, Core, 2005, and Gevald, 2008 â and a documentary Metamorphosis, 2006, based on testimonies of raped women. Her poems and short stories have been published in various literary magazines. Her first poetry volume called Kill and Breathe came out in 2006.
(b. 1952) is a Lithuanian poet, translator, and essayist; a member of the Lithuanian Writersâ Union, of the Lithuanian Association of Literary Translators and the Lithuanian PEN centre. Founder and leader of Magnus Ducatus Poesis â the Society of Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian, Polish, Latvian, Russian poets, translators and other artists. BraziĆ«nas is one of the creators of the Movement of the French speaking poets of the Central Europe Cap Ă l'Est. The first book of poems As Lightning Moves was published in 1983 and BraziĆ«nas received Zigmas GÄlÄ prize for the best poetry debut. Between 1986 and 2008 BraziĆ«nas 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. BraziĆ«nas lives and works in Vilnius.
was born in 1938 in Algarve, Portugal. He had several jobs before attending Westfield College (London), where he discovered classical Japanese poetry. He is now a professional writer and lives in Lisbon, from where he travels around the world. His first book was published in 1957. He writes poetry, fiction, aphorisms and essays and is the author of 49 titles. His works have been included in 197 anthologies and translated into 26 languages. He is also the director of Poetry Festival in Portugal, editor of several literary magazines and poetry collections, president of the General Assembley of the Portuguese P.E.N., advisor to the WHA-Tokyo and to âDiversity-PENâ and was nominated World Peace Ambassador, among other honours. He was awarded several Portuguese and international poetry prizes and was honoured with the Ordem do Infante D. Henrique by the President of Portuguese Republic.
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.
was born in Gallarate (Lombardy) in 1948. He lives in Rome. He is a professor of comparative literature in the university of Milano IULM. His books of poetry include: âSuora Carmelitanaâ (Montale Award, Guanda, 1997); âIl Profilo del Rosaâ (Betocchi Award, Mondadori, 2000); âGuerraâ (Dedalus Award, Mondadori, 2005). In 1989 he founded and he is continues to be the editor of the review Testo a Fronte, dedicated to the theory and the practice of literary translation (Marcos y Marcos). As a novelist he has published PiĂč luce, padre (Sossella 2006), Reperto 74 (Zona 2008), Zamel (Marcos y Marcos 2009).
writing articulates the many facets of contemporary Mediterranean living, seeking new possibilities of literary expression in the process. His poetry has been published in various international and Maltese anthologies and journals, and aired on radio and TV stations. His new collection of poems, Cities, will be published towards the end of 2009. Norbert graduated with first class honours in English from the University of Malta in 2002 and read for a Masters degree with distinction in 2005. As a Commonwealth scholar he is now working on his doctoral research in English literature and critical theory at the University of Warwick, UK.
(1944) has been one of Latviaâs most influential poets and translators for the last several decades. He gained full recognition only after Latviaâs independence was restored in 1991. His first collection of verse, Piemineklis kazai (Monument to a goat), was published in 1980, followed by PoÄtisms baltkrievs (Poeticism Byelorussian, 1984) and NenotikuĆĄie atentÄti (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. BÄrziĆĆĄ translates and renders from Slavic, Semitic, Turkish, Iranian, German and other languages, and is regarded as one of the most significant contemporary translators. BÄrziĆĆĄ did fieldwork in the Theology Department of Lunda University on preparation for translation of the Koran into Latvian.
(Gokçenur ĂelebioÄlu) 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 Ă.N. (initials for "translator's note" in Turkish), dedicated to poetry in translation.
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 Fiâs Farewell and Other Poems (Luath, 2003); and âNothing but Heather!â: 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
Antoine Cassar, born to Maltese parents in 1978 in London, grew up between England, Malta and Spain, and worked and studied in Italy and France. He lives between Luxembourg and Madrid, working as a translator. A writer of both Maltese and multilingual verse, Cassar was awarded the Grand Prize of the United Planet Writing Contest. Cassar's latest and most important poetic work, Passaport, published in the form of an anti-passport for all people and all landscapes, has appeared in Maltese, Italian, French, English and Luxembourgish.
(Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain, 1977) has a BA with Honors in Spanish Language and Literature with media studies. Apart from being a poet - who published her first book at the age of 17 - Yolanda is a columnist in some of Galiciaâs main journals and currently a co-hostess in a cultural daily quiz show on Galician television. She has published five poetry books - most of them published as bilingual (Galician-Spanish) editions - and a pair of collections. She has won several poetry awards, amongst which, the National Critics Award, the Espiral Maior Poetry Award and the Ojo CrĂtico Poetry Award (best poetry book by a young author in Spain) stand out. She is a cultural activist, regularly organising poetry readings and literary workshops. She has also made her contribution to books with other authors, state and Galician anthologies, conferences and many readings inside and outside Galicia, around Europe and America. She has coordinated collective books, been a curator in art and poetry exhibitions and written three poetry books for children. With a strong interest in the blending of poetry and other creative languages, she has been involved in many different fusions with music, performance, dance, visual and audiovisual arts. Her poems have been translated into ten different languages. www.yolandacastano.com
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 BÄrziĆĆĄ and JÄnis 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, LiteratĆ«ra, MÄksla, MÄs, and Karogs in Latvia, JaunÄ 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
Giorgos Chantzis was born in 1972 in Athens. He studied Education and Philosophy (Universtiy of Athens) and English Literary Translation (The European Center for the Translation of Literature and the Human Sciences). He writes poetry criticism for the daily paper Eleftherotypia and the poetry journal Poiitiki [Poetics]. Since 2006 he has directed the seminar series Contemporary Poetry Readings at the philosophy café Dasein in Athens. His poetry is published in Karaoke Poetry Bar, (ed. Futura, Athens 2007), Noveltly Within or Beyond Language, Contemporary, Anthology of young Greek Poets, (ed. Gavriilidis Athens 2009), Bella Boom, (forthcoming, 2009).
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 (Indiaâs 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. Sampurnaâs 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.
(novelist, essayist, translator; Greece) is among the most prolific young prose writers on the Greek literary scene. He has authored four novels, most recently âImaginary Museum,â 2005; a volume of essays (âThe Language Box,â 2006), a collection of short stories (âNapolean Delastosâ Recipes,â 1997), a novella (âThe Parthenon Bomber,â 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 Lâart 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 TromsĂž (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 Ă© 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 sonĂąmbula, (Sleepwalking Land, 1992) A veranda do frangipani, (The Veranda with Frangipani, 1996) O ultimo vĂŽo 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 âMutumbela Gogoâ, 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 dĂ©but later that year as a performing poet. After many performances she entered Flandersâ 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 cittĂ 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).
With a background in art history, SiĂąn Melangell Dafydd has worked in galleries in London and abroad before more recently graduating from the renowned creative writing programme at the University of East Anglia (UEA), Norwich. Y Trydydd Peth (The Third Thing) is her first novel and won her the coveted 2009 National Eisteddfod Literature Medal. Originally from the coastal and mountainous region of Meirionnydd in north Wales she now divides her time between Wales and Paris, where she is researching a second novel. Sian is also currently involved with the Word Express project http://www.word-express.org
was born in Beijing in 1949. In 1978, he co-founded the first unofficial literary journal Today (Jingtian). Since 1987, Bei Dao has lived and taught in England, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, France, and the United States. His works have been translated into thirty languages, including six poetry volumes in English â The Rose of Time (2009), Unlock (2000), Landscape Over Zero (1996), Forms of Distance (1994), Old Snow (1992), The August Sleepwalker (1990), a collection of stories, Waves (1990), and two collections of essays, Midnightâs Gate (2005) and Blue House (2000). He has won numerous awards and honors and has been nominated for the Nobel Prize several times. Currently, he is a Professor of Humanities at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
was born in 1962 in TörökszentmiklĂłs, 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, Ălet Ă©s 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 rĂłzsabokrok (The Rose Bushes of Veinhagen, 1993) A Borgognoni-fĂ©le szomorĂșsĂĄg (Sadness Ă la Borgognoni, 1994) and Szerelmem, Dumumba elvtĂĄrsno (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 âamazing imagination and sheer linguistic brillianceâ.
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, Ć»ywoty rĂłwnolegĆe Parallel Lives, 2004) and Wyprawa na poĆudnie (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 KoĆcielski 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 â 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 Ćœidinys. 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 âYoung Yotvingianâ award at prestigious Druskininkai Poetic Fall festival in 2006.His work has been translated into Latvian, Slovenian, and English. DekĆĄnys lives and works in Vilnius.
was born in 1977 in Skopje, Republic of Macedonia. She graduated in Macedonian Literature and South Slavic Literatures. During her studies at the St. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, she published poetry in the Mugri student literary magazine and in the Lettre Internationale literary magazine. In 2002, her first book of poetry, Exercises For Proper Breathing was published by Makavej, Skopje. Her second collection of poetry entitled Me-You was part of a project with the painter Marija Nikoloska Naneska in 2004. The project was installed in the Skopje City Museum in October 2002. In 2003 and 2004, her poems were published in the literary magazine Stremez. In 2008, her third collection of poetry entitled Goddess Of The Feral Cats was published by Blesok, Skopje, and in 2009 her fourth book was published by the same publisher. The fourth book is entitled In The Barbieâs Aquarium. Her poetry has been published in the electronic magazine for culture Blesok No.63. She is working on her master thesis on The Post-Modernist Traps In Goran Stefanovskiâs Plays. As well as poetry, she writes prose and literature reviews. Aleksandra Dimitrova works and lives in Skopje, Republic of Macedonia. Blog - www.bonbonce.blogspot.com
was born in 1977. In 2008 she won the Maribor poetry tournament award and the 6th Ljubljana poetry slam. In September 2008, her first poetry collection, Rumeno Gori Grm Forzicij, was published by Literatura and awarded Best First Book award at the 24th Slovenian Book Fair. Veronika has published poems and essays by Louise GlĂŒck, Muriel Rukeyser and Denise Levertov in her translation and co-translated the 20th century Irish poetry anthology, Äudovita usta. Dancing on the Edge of the World, a collection of essays by Ursula K. Le Guin in Veronika's translation was published in 2007. Veronika is a co-organizer of the monthly poetry reading series Mlade Rime hosted at Metelkova by Cultural Society Kentaver.
(1977, Belgrade) is a poet, prose writer, translator and editor. He holds degrees in Serbian and world literature from the University of Belgrade and from the Belgrade Open University. He is one of the founders of the cultural NGO TreÄi Trg (Third Square) which publishes the electronic and printed literary and art magazine TreÄi Trg (www.trecitrg.org.rs), where he works as editor. He is also the founder director of the Belgrade International Poetry and Book Festival. His poetry and prose has been in various Serbian magazines and newspapers ( Student, Beogradske novine, PanÄevac, Rukopisi, IstoÄnik, Txt, URB, Re, Contrastes, Album), and he has also published studies about early Christianity. His short stories were included in the anthology Shortest stories (2006), and he has co-authored the prose book Diary 2000 (2001). His poetry collections are Pressure(2002), Coping(2006) and Blessed Losers (2009). His works have been translated into English, French, Polish and Catalan.
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, BrĆ«nÄs 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. PreradoviÄ, 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.
(1983, Budapest) is a poet, writer, literary translator and critic. He started publishing around the turn of the millennium, since then his prose, poetry, translations and criticism have appeared in all leading Hungarian literary reviews and magazines. In 2006 he recieved the PetĆfi Poetry Grant from the Hungarian National Radio. He is member of the Attila JĂłzsef Young Writersâ Association (JĂłzsef Attila Kör, JAK), and Hungarian PEN. He translates classical and contemporary French and Belgian authors, such as the works of Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Marguerite Duras, Maurice Blanchot, William Cliff, Carl Norac, Laurent de Graeve, etc. His translation of Alain Robbe-Grilletâs last novel, Un roman sentimental (A Sentimental Novel) is due to be published in spring 2009 by MagvetĆ. From 2005, he has been working as a a critic of contemporary Hungarian literature, and publishing essays on the works of Marcel Proust and Thomas Mann. He is currently in the process of finishing his studies of aesthetics and French literature at the Eötvös LorĂĄnd University of Budapest.
Efe Duyan, born 1981 in Ä°stanbul, is a poet and architect. After graduating from the German School of Ä°stanbul he studied Architecture and Philosophy at Middle East Technical University (B.A.) and History and Theory of Architecture in Yıldız Tecnical University (M.S). He teaches architecture at Mimar Sinan University. His poems and essays have been published in several literary reviews such as Edebiyat EleĆtiri, ĂtekiâSiz, Damar, Kavram KarmaĆaand Akköy. He has been on editorial boards of the reviews Nikbinlik, Damar, Sol and Sanat Cephesi. He has published one collection of poems, Takas (2006) with Kemal Ăzer. His book The Construction of Characters in NĂązım Hikmetâs Poetry was published in 2008.
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 artistâs group WochenKlauser. WochenKlausur has been conducting social interventions since 1993. The concept of âinterventionâ, 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 â small-scale but very concrete â 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.
(1976) published her collection Dhawâa Muhtaz (Shaken Light) in 2001. Her successful debut novel Maryamâs Mazewas was published by the award-winning Merit publishers in 2004, with the English edition published by AUC Press, Cairo. She has worked in Egyptian television, and presently runs the book review section of the renowned Egyptian literary magazine Akhbar al-Adab ('Literature News').
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 Manâs 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 Werenât, 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.
(LâEspluga de FrancolĂ, 1971) is a poet and translator. He has published the books Llocs comuns [Common Places, 2004]; Retorns de lâEst (Tria de poemas 1990-2001 [Returns from the East (Selection of Poems 1990-2001), 2005]; and Inventari de fronteres [Inventory of Frontiers, 2006]. His most recent book of poems, La disfressa dels arbres [The Disguise of the Trees], came out at the end of 2008. Some of his poems have been translated into Croatian, Slovene, English, Polish and Lithuanian. As a translator, he works mainly from Polish and Slovene. Notable are his translations of works by CzesĆaw MiĆosz (Travessant fronteres. Antologia poĂštica 1945-2000 [Crossing Borders. Poetry Anthology 1945-2000]) and Adam Zagajewski (Tierra del Fuego/Terra del Foc, Deseo, Antenas [Tierra del Fuego, Desire, Antennas]), as well as essays by Zbigniew Herbert (Still Life with Bridle and Barbarian in the Garden, forthcoming). From Slovene, he has published translations of works by AleĆĄ Debeljak (La ciutat i el nen [The City and the Child]) and Lojze KovaÄiÄ (Los inmigrados [The Immigrants]). For the last two years he has maintained a blog at: http://xavierfarreabcd.blogspot.com
(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 (WrocĆaw: Biuro Literackie, 2009). Her first collection (Listopad nad NarwiÄ ) 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 âunder the frog's arse down a coalmineâ, which roughly translates as âliving at the lowest point of existenceâ. 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, âmust be the only novel narrated by an antique vesselâ. His collection of short stories Donât Read This Book If Youâre 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 PovĂdky: Stories by Czech Women, Telegram, 2006. The poems in this anthology are from her collections BabĂ hodina (Hagâs Hour, 1994) and NynĂ (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, Katieâs Warâset during the Civil War in Irelandâwon 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.
Author of several books published in Belgium, France, Quebec, Germany, Austria, Latvia, Great-Britain, Romania, Bulgaria etc. Her poems can also be found in many periodicals and anthologies (in countries such as Armenia, Spain, the United States, Greece, Israel, Algeria, Italy and Latvia). Her work has been translated into more than 12 languages. She has taught at the Universities of Liege (Belgium), Lund (Sweden), Latvia (in Riga), from which she received an honorary doctorate. She is a member of the jury of the Premio Napoli, the international literary prize of the city of Naples. Taught painting (by Berthe Dubail) and theatre (by Yves Bical, Uta Wagner, Genevieve Page, Joseph Jacquinet) she takes her own poems and those she has translated to the stage.
(1963 BrĂŠdstrup, Denmark), received his education from Aarhus University, and at the age of twenty-two broke out on the literary scene with his collection of minimalist poetry, Ăjeblikket (The Instant, 1985). The following year he published a second volume, Digte I kim (Poems in Embryo). With his third collection, Genfortryllelsen (1988), influenced in part by his translation of John Ashberyâs poetry, Frankâs text grew longer and his sense of irony increased. Frank received a three year stipend from the Danish Arts Foundation. Since that time, he has also been involved with the famed Copenhagen School of Creative Writing (Forfatterskolen), acting as director from 1996-2001.
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 Dragonâs Milk Teeth, 1992) and La tentation amĂ©ricaine (The American Temptation, 1993) and the collection of novellas L'Atelier de Barbe-Bleue (The Studio of Blue Beard, 2002).
(1970) gained a graduate degree in Philosophy from the University of Cairo in 1992. After publishing many short stories, he published two novels, of which The Black Magic was published in English by AUC Press in Cairo and awarded the Sawiris Foundation Prize for Egyptian Literature in 2006.
(pen name: LĂĄszlĂł G. IstvĂĄn; 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 Writersâ House in Rhodes, an NKA Literary Grant, and the RadnĂłti 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).
born in Malta in 1973, is particularly sensitive to the linguistic schizophrenia prevalent on the island, due to his upbringing speaking English and his relatively late embracing of Maltese as a viable literary vehicle. Following University, a series of dead end jobs and a five year stint in Prague playing the bohemian, he now lives in Brussels earning a living translating into Maltese for the European Union. He is married and has a son. His interests are not limited to writing, and include film making and music, while his dream is to write a number of books currently germinating in his head and keeping him awake at night, and then quit. A number of his novellas have been published this year in two books: Lil Hinn Mill-Jien and ƻewĥ.
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 Cartarescuâs 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.
(Gaza, 1974) graduated in Arab Literature in Gaza. She worked as a volunteer in women projects and then as a presenter of various local radio programmes before becoming the culture correspondent for the news agency Wafa. In 2001 she began working for a Palestinian satellite station. She is the author of two books of poetry, There is still sea between us (Gaza, 2000) and A Very Seditious Woman (Egypt, 2003). 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 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 aâCharbad fo Thalamh (Polygon 2000).
(1966, MarijampolÄ) 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 KlaipÄda 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 KlaipÄda. http://grajauskas.googlepages.com/ http://www.imeem.com/people/cokQH5T/playlists/
vive nei Campi Flegrei (Napoli), luoghi di Virgilio, dove la terra danza al ritmo di terremoti quotidiani. Ha pubblicato vari saggi di letteratura e arti visive (con impostazione cognitivista) e alcuni libri di poesia, talvolta in edizione bilingue. Col poema "Sebeto" (antico e sotterraneo fiume di Napoli) ha ricostruito la lingua napoletana, nel segno di Federico II. Poiché i versi stampati in off-set vanno al macero, ha optato da anni per le edizioni a tiratura limitata curate da case di libri d'artista e in tandem con incisori e pittori. Il suo ultimo testo, "Taranterra" (aprile 2009), poema sulla possessione e il dionisismo, ha inaugurato la "Settimana della cultura" del Museo Archeologico Nazionale. Intensi i suoi studi sull'oralità , che lo hanno obbligato a suonare la tammorra perché i primi poeti, a cominciare dai rapsodi omerici, erano anche suonatori di tamburo. Ha scritto testi per canzoni, alla maniera del trobar clus, e ha ricostruito danze storiche (la pirrica, p.es.) utilizzando il "piede metrico" popolare e partendo da riti e culti ancora praticati durante feste religiose. Ha tradotto molti autori sia antichi che contemporanei. E' segretario dell'Istituto Patafisico Partenopeo con la qualifica di "ingegnere e macchinista di labirinti mnemonici".
Her debut Titlul volumului meu, care mÄ preocupÄ atĂąt de mult... ( The Title Of My Collection, Which Preoccupies Me So Much...) made Adela Greceanu (1975) one of the voices that highlighted a certain shift of vision and attitude in new Romanian poetry. Concerned with femininity and the subjective emotional life of a "persona" called in her second book DomniĆoara Cvasi (Miss Quasi, 2001), Adela Greceanu consolidated her reputation with every new book. Her latest collection (Understanding Right Through The Heart, 2004) and her recent novel (The RedâSocked Bride, 2008) develop her onirical, almost surrealistic vision, making her one of the most original contemporary Romanian writers whose poetry is considered to continue the tradition of Gellu Naum and Rene Char.
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 FrĂŒhling - 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, SinĂ€ siellĂ€ kaukana nĂ€ytĂ€t tutulta (You out there, you look familiar) contains ten poems from her first collection of poetry, PĂ„ diabilden Ă€r huvudet proppfullt av lycka (In the slide the head overflows with joy), while the second part consists of her acclaimed collection, Ădemjuka belles lettres frĂ„n en till en (Softly destined belles lettres from one to another). The poems have been translated by the praised young poet, Kristiina LĂ€hde. Gripenberg won the Arvid Mörne poetry prize in 1998 and the Stig Carlsson prize in Sweden in 2003.
was born in VĂĄmospĂ©rcs, 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 Ălet Ă©s 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 MĂ©z Ă©s szurok (Honey and Tar â short stories, 2005). Margit HalĂĄsz 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 StraĆĄnĂĄ zĂĄĆe (Terrible Radiance, 1991) and Bytost (A Being, 1994) and a collection of poems and prose texts Hluk (Noise, 1997). His latest collection KoncovĂĄ svÄtla (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 1972 in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon. He has published several poetical works and two novels: Valentine's Day, followed by Al Saada or Silsilat Infijarat Hazat Al Asima ('Happiness or A Series of Explosions Rocked the Capital'). He translates both poetry and prose and has contributed as well to many Arabic cultural supplements. Since 2004 he has lived and worked in United Arab Emirates.
was born in 1981 in Armenia. Initially she studied computer science at the State Engineering University of Armenia, and in 2005 she participated in World Press Photo seminars. Currently she is studying at the Danish School of Media and Journalism in Copenhagen. In 2002, the Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art published her first book of poems. In 2005, her second book Taboo was published, winning the Young Writer Award of the Writers Union of Armenia. Her poems have been published in Inknagir, Bnagir, Actual Art, Garunand Gretert magazines. Alongside writing she is engaged in photography. Her photos have been published by National Geographic Traveler, Eurasianet.org, Armenianow.com, Zaman, Ogoniok,and Newsweek. In 2006, she won the President's Prize in Armenia, as well as prizes for Eurasia Social Portrait 2007, Black Sea and Caucasus 2008, Europe and Asia 2009. See Anahit's blog here.
(Zurich, 1959) is a poet writing in French. He has published three poetry books: Ne retournez pas la pierre (1996), La pour me souvenir / Qui per ricordare (2005) et En deça de la lumiere (2009). He is also translator from French into German. He edited an anthology Passagen â ErzĂ€hlungen aus der französischen Schweiz 1970-1990.
(1964). After her Masters in applied linguistics (Tilburg University) and Turkish studies (Utrecht University) she worked as a lecturer at the Department of Dutch Language and Literature at Ankara University (1994-1998). Since 2000 she has been working as an interpreter and literary translator Turkish-Dutch. She translated Turkish novels and short stories of among others Orhan Pamuk, Elif Shafak, Halid Ziya UĆaklıgil, Ahmet Altan, OÄuz Atay, some of them in collaboration with Margreet Dorleijn, with whom she also prepared an anthology of Turkish short stories. Van der Heijden was editor of a Dutch magazine on Turkish literature Umut and publishes articles on Turkish literature and translation in literary magazines.
was born in Hradec KrĂĄlovĂ© 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, VĆĄechna 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 OâDonoghue with Ć imon DanĂÄek. 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 SpanishÂŽs 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., CartografĂa, 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 SzymborskaÂŽs poems and in the translation of several Portuguese poets, such as Sophia de Melo, EugĂ©nio de Andrade and Jorge de Sena.
(1979) is a poet, translator, musican, literary critic and journalist. He graduated summa cum laude from the Israeli Music Conservatory in Tel Aviv in 1997. In 2002, he studied at the Department of the Hebrew Bible at Tel Aviv University and from 2002 to 2005 he was a student in the Adi Lautman Interdisciplinary Program for Outstanding Students at Tel Aviv University. He received his MA in Judaic studies from the Tel Aviv University in 2005 and is currently a Doctoral student at the Department of Hebrew Literature at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His publications include Notes from the Miracle Fair: Essays on Modern Poetry (2003), a Hebrew translation of E. E. Cummings: Selected Poems (2003), a book of poetry The Wandering Piano (2005), selected poems in Hebrew translation Max Jacob: Les vrais miracles (2006), Portrait on the Edge of Darkness: Essays on the poetry of Israel Har(2007), poems and a classical music CD Days of the TelâAviv Conservatory (2007). He is currently working on selected poems in Hebrew translation Eugene Guillevic: ParenthĂšse and Lattices: Essays on Dan Tsalka. He is the recipeint of several awards including the Metula Poetry Festival Prize and the Israel Ministry of Education Prize for Young Poets. He lives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel.
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 writersâ and translatorsâ 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 AbsolĂștny sluch (Perfect Pitch). Since then he has published collections of short stories under the titles of Karol D. HorvĂĄth (2005), Karol D2 HorvĂĄth (2005) and Karol 3D HorvĂĄth (2006). He is a co-writer of a successful TV sitcom Mafstor and a member of the ĆœivĂœ dĂŽkaz (Living Proof) literary circle. The social and subcultural phenomena of pop culture are typical themes in HorvĂĄth's stories. His "heroes" are under the controlling influence of fantasies and obsessions. HorvĂĄth 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. HorvĂĄth's mastery lies in a compressed plot, narrative brevity, and constant hovering on the brink of kitsch and slapstick. HorvĂĄth 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.
poet and critic (1978), graduated in Bulgarian philology at Sofia University in 2001 and defended his PhD on Bulgarian 1920s Modernism at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in 2008. His first book of poetry, Sbogom devetnajsti vek (Farewell To the 19th Century, 2001) won the prestigious 2002 Southern Spring award for the best debut book. His second collection, Bdin (2004) received critical acclaim, as well as the 2006 Svetlostrui Prize for poetry. He regularly publishes poems in anthologies and leading Bulgarian periodicals including Literary Newspaper, Altera, Sega, Capital. His work has been translated into English, Croatian, German and Hungarian. Ivan has participated in poetry festivals festivals abroad including Ars Poetica in Bratslavia in 2007 and the Goran Spring Festival in Croatia in 2009, where he received first prize in the Poetry Marathon in Hvar. Ivan Hristov is also a leading literary critic of his generation with numerous accademic publications and regular participation in conferences both in Bulgaria and abroad.
(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 â Gdansk â 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 GĂŒnter 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 â novels, novellas, short story collections and children's books â 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 womenâs 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, Romaniaâs Cultural Attache to Washington DC (1992-96), secretary of the Romanian PEN Club (2004/6), member of the Writersâ 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 Romaniaâs 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 Writersâ Guild in Romania.
was born in 1981 in Sofia. A graduate from the First English Language School in Sofia, Angel has a BA degree in English Philology and a MA in Literature Studies from Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski. He is a PhD student in West European Literature at the same university. In 2003 he studied at Roehampton University in London. He is the author of two collections of short stories: Sreshti na putia ( Meetings on the road) (2002) and Đ. (2006). The first collection won the Grand prize for a prose debut at the national competition Iuzhna prolet (Southern Spring) in 2003. The second collection was nominated for the Elias Kaneti prize in 2007. Angel has won prizes for prose in the Rashko Sugarev competition and for literary criticism in the Boyan Penev competition. He works as a literary observer in 5 on Richter culture broadcast on TV7 (since 2005) and for Cultura newspaper (2006-08). He regularly publishes his works in Literaturen vestnik ( Literary Newspaper), Đapital Light, Altera, Sega, Manager, 1 Sedmitsa v Sofia( A Week in Sofia), and others. He was also a host on Vsiaka Subota ( Every Saturday) culture broadcast on Net radio (2004-05). Angel was a judge for the novel of the year competition Vik ( Shout) in 2007 and for the poetry book of the year competition Ivan Nikolov in 2009. He has translated into Bulgarian a novel of each of the following authors: Paul Auster, Martin Amis, Douglas Kennedy and Ian McEwan. His short stories are translated in French, Hungarian, Serbian and Croatian. Angel is a co-founding member of the National Council of ZELENITE (The Green) political party.
was born in 1969 and represents Latviaâs 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 Ă©migrĂ© Brunis Rubess. She works as editor at the literary magazine Kargos and lives outside Riga.
was born in Athens and studied Chemistry at the University of Thessaloniki, and Fine Arts at Guildhall University in London. Her first book of poetry entitled Mister T. (Melani, 2007) won the "prize for new author" of the literary journal Diavazo. Asylumis her second book of poetry (Melani, 2008). She is a member of the arts collective intothepill (www.intothepill.net). In 2007, as a parallel project of the first Athens Biennial, intothepill organised and presented Karaoke Poetry Bar, a multimodal installation with poetry, video and performance. She was the editor of the bilingual (Greek/English) anthology of contemporary Greek poetry Poetry Karaoke which was published as part of the project. She has edited and translated into Greek the poetry of Sylvia Plath (Kedros, 2003) and has also translated poetry by Mina Loy, Ted Hughes, Robert Hass, for the journals Poiisi, Poiitiki and the e-zine poema.gr. She is currently working on an anthology of Ted Hughesâ poetry due to be published in 2010. She is the editor of poetryboxin the e-zine www.happyfew.gr .She is also a member of Greek Poetry Now a poetâs collective which organises regular discussions and readings investigating aspects of contemporary poetry.
(1970 Skopje, Macedonia) is a poet and prose writer. He holds a BA in World and Comparative Literature from Sts. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje and MA in Gender and Culture, CEU, Budapest. He has worked as radio & TV show host for various stations in Macedonia, and as a web designer and eâpublishing consultant. He is founder and director of the Cultural Institution Blesok and works as its editorâinâchief and webmaster. He has published Letters (1991, novel), Black Sun(1992, poetry), Explosions, Pregnant Moon, Eruptions⊠(1993, short stories), Vulcan â Earth â (1995, poetry), â Sky (1996, 2000, poetry), Engravings, Blues Phone Booth (2001, prose etchings), Sandglass (2002, short stories), Way Down in the Hole (poetry, 2004), Swimming in the Dust (2005, novel, Prose Masters Award 2005), Blues Phone Booth II (2006, prose etchings). His work has been translated and published in USA, Australia, Korea, Netherlands, Romania, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Israel, Poland, Hungary, and United Kingdom, including Sky (poetry in English, 1996, 2000), Sejanje smeha (selected poetry in Serbian and Macedonian, 2003), I & Tom Waits (selected poetry in English and Macedonian, 2003), Sandglass (short stories in English, 2003). He translates poetry, prose, and essays, from and into Macedonian, English, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrian. His Macedonian translations include books by AleĆĄ Debeljak, Ludwig Giesz, Maria Todorova, DuĆĄan Gojkov, Claude Freeman III, Robert Mlinarec, Josip Osti, Ronny Someck, M.T.C. Cronin, Goran GluviÄ, Thomas Shapcott, Jack Galmitz, Gerrit Bussink, and Hans van de Waaresnburg. He lives in Skopje, with his wife Kalina, their daughters Sara and Lina, and all their friends.
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.
(1976) is a poet and writer. Her book of poetry, Brez (Without), was published in 2009. Her poetry and short stories have been published in Slovenian and foreign literary magazines and anthologies. She translates Czech and Polish literature and received the award for the most perspective young translator in 2009. She also works as a belletristic editor and proof-reader and is a teacher of Slovene as a foreign language.
, 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 poĆŸelenje (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 PreĆĄeren Prize for his lifetime achievement in 1993. He lives in Ljubljana.
was born in CÄsis, Latvia, in 1982. Her first novella, ViĆpus stikla (âBehind The Glassâ), was released in 2006. Four of her short stories have been published in the daily newspaper Diena, and her stories âMÄness vÄ«zijasâ (âThe Visions of the Moonâ) and âBrÄ«niĆĄÄ·Ä«gÄ jaunÄ Latvijaâ (âBrave New Latviaâ) were included in short-story anthologies in 2007 and 2008, respectively. Jansone participated in the 2004 National Drama Competition with her play MargarÄ«na paaudze (âThe Margarine Generationâ), 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 PreĆĄeren 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).
(Porto 1973) is a poet and translator. He holds an M.A. in theory of literature and is working on his doctoral thesis. He has published four collections of poetry, the most recent being SonĂłtono (Cotovia, 2007) which was awarded the PEN prize for Poetry. He has translated some of the greatest classics of world literature, including Waugh, Auden and Pirandello. His translation of John Miltonâs Paradise Lost was published in 2006, and his new version of Shakespeareâs The Merchant of Venice was staged by the Teatro Nacional de SĂŁo JoĂŁo in Porto. He has also written stage plays for the company Teatro Bruto. He lives in Porto.
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 â in other words: a fetish. Her novel Black Mirror, set in the authorâs 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
was born in1983 in Sliven, Bulgaria. She graduated in Bulgarian Philology at the Faculty of Slavic Philologies, Sofia University with a MA degree in Literary Theory with a thesis Narrowed Publicity: Cryptographies in the Bulgarian Revival Correspondence (2006). She is a PhD student in Bulgarian Literature of the Revival Period at the same University. The topic of her dissertation is Literary Publicity and the Construction of Figures of Morality. Together with Kamelia Spassova she is working on the project: Doubles as Uncanny Figures in Literature. She is co-founder of the art-group Ustata (The Mouth). At the beginning of 2009, Maria became an editor of Literaturen vestnik ( Literary Newspaper). She has participated in poetry festivals abroad and had her poetry is translated into Croatian and German. She has published two books of poems Okoto ( The Eye), 2004 and Podnogieto na vecheriata ( Under the Knife of Supper), 2008.
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 dâaffaires at the UN. She served as the Latvian ambassador to France and Spain between 1997 and 2002, and as Latviaâs 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 historyâthe deportation of half a million of Latvians to Soviet labour campsâcaptured the imagination of readers around the world and has been translated into twelve languages.
(1973) has published three collections of poetry: Kurat Ă”rnal lumel (A Devil on Tender Snow, 2006), Tule mu koopasse, mateeria (Come into My Cave, Matter, 2007), and Heureka (Eureka, 2008); and a collection of short stories, Ahvid ja solidaarsus (Monkeys and Solidarity, 2010). Both her fiction and poetry are characterised by an ironical exploration of ideas, attitudes, and ethical stances. Heureka received the Estonian Cultural Endowment Award for poetry in 2009; both Heureka and Tule mu koopasse, mateeria won the Tallinn University Literary Prize (in 2008 and 2009, respectively). She has also published literary criticism, essays, and a childrenâs book Puuviljadraakon (Fruit Dragon, 2006), which received the Estonian Childrenâs Literature Centreâs Best Book of the Year Award. She has written five opera librettos, texts for cantatas and chamber songs. She has translated theory (Giorgio Agamben, Umberto Eco) and poetry by more than 100 poets (e.g. Jacopone da Todi, Giacomo Leopardi, Andrea Zanzotto, Valerio Magrelli, Philip Larkin, Bertolt Brecht, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Ernst Jandl). In 2003 she won the first prize in the SocietĂ Dante Alighieri competition for translations of Italian poetry. Her poems have been translated into English, German, Hungarian and Italian.
(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 â Welsh, Breton, French, Spanish and English â 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.
Doris Kareva (1958) graduated from Tartu University in 1983 in Roman-Germanic philology, worked in the cultural weekly Sirp from 1978â1993 and 1997â2002. From 1992 to 2008 she was the Secretary-General of Estonian National Commission for UNESCO in Estonia and from 2009 was the Chief Editor of family journal Meie Pere. Kareva has published 12 collections of poetry, one book of children`s literature and one book of essays, received two national cultural prizes and numerous literary prizes. Books of her poetry have appeared in Russian, Latvian, Swedish, Thai, has also been translated into French, English, German, Dutch, Hindi, Norwegian, Finnish, Czech, Slovenic, Polish, Welsh, Scottish, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Romanian, Irish, Greek and Hebrew. Her writing has been set to music, dance and theatre by various artists in Sweden, Belgium, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Germany, Canada, Greece, Thailand, Estonia. She has translated poetry, plays and essays (Ahmatova, Auden, Beckett, Brodsky, Dickinson, Gibran, Kabir, Shakespeare etc), compiled anthologies and written essays, articles and texts for classical music and theatre.
(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 JyvĂ€skylĂ€ and Helsinki Universities. She has published three collections of poetry with Otava, most recently Harry Harlowân rakkauselĂ€mĂ€t; 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 NĂ€o 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 (2005âwinner of the 2005 Golden Orange Poetry Award), collected poems Kim Bagislayacak Beni (Whoâs Going to Forgive Me, 2005) and Yâol (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.
(1962) has an M.A. in comparative literature from the University of Turku and studied Turkish studies at the Universities of Istanbul and Uppsala. She has worked as freelance translator from Turkish and Swedish since 1995. Among the authors she has translated are Orhan Pamuk, Hasan Ali Toptas and Klas Ăstergren. She has received several fellowships, for example the Finnish Government Artist's Grant for three years (2005-2007) and her translations of Orhan Pamuk's Snow and Istanbul won the Finnish Government Annual Award for Translation in 2005
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, VĂĄl za mnou smÄĆĄnĂœ ĆĄos (A Ridiculous tailcoat fluttered behind me, 1994) and VidÄl jsi, ĆŸe 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 ânew waveâ. His second book, Domestic Circus (Cartea RomĂąneascÄ, 2005) was awarded The Romanian Academy Poetry Prize. He was editor of the literary magazine âversus/mâ (2005-2007) and now he mainly works as translator of French literature (Tahar Ben Jelloun, RenĂ© 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 Ć empeter pri Gorici, Slovenia, and now lives, works and writes between Nova Gorica, Ljubljana and Sarajevo. He studied at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts and the Peace Institute in Ljubljana and is currently a PhD student at Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts. Since 2005 he has worked as Research Assistant at the Peace Institute of Ljubljana. He is the author of the first monograph about the physical and social aspects of touching in Slovenian ( An attempt at a touch), and has published in journals for social sciences and humanities in Slovenian, English, Italian and Bosnian. He is the coâfounder and an active member of The Youth Club of the Slovenian Writers Association. He has published poems, novellas, plays and several literary reviews in the main literary journals in Slovenia and Bosnia ( Apokalipsa, OtoÄjeO, Sarajevske sveske). He is the editor of an anthology of young Slovenian writers, Zbornik Mladinskega kluba DSP. His publications include Mes(t)ne drame ( City Dramas, 2006), a collection of three plays. In 2008, he published Luciferjev padec ( Lucifer's Fall), a dramatic poem in ten acts. His literaryâphilosophical travelogue, Sarajevski dnevnik ( Sarajevo Diary) came out in 2008.
was born in 1977 in Lublin, Poland. He studied culture animation and management and political science. His poetry debut was the collection Thanatos jeans in 2005. In 2008 published Traktaty konstrata (Konstratâs treatises) and in 2009 Samochody i krew (Cars and blood). He has been awarded a number of poetry prizes in Poland. In 2004 participated in Polish-German Tranlation Workshop in Pieniezno (organized by Stowarzyszenie Ć»ywych Poetow and Verein zur Förderung der Deutsch-Polnischen Literatur. His poetry was published in all of the most important Polish literature magazines including: Ha!art, Odra, Topos, Wakat, Red, Opcje. Thanatos jeans was selected as best debut poetry book of 2005 in the project Poets of the New Century.
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 Itâs 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 NevernĂ© ĆŸeny neznĂĄĆĄajĂș vajĂÄka (Faithless Wives Do Not Lay Eggs, 2002), which was followed by a collection of prose works Travesty ĆĄou (Travesty Show, 2004) and she has also written two books for the theatre of the homeless: KrvavĂœ kÄŸĂșÄ (The Bloodstained Key, 2005) and Oktagon (Octagon, 2006). In 2008 her first novel Ćœena zo sekĂĄÄa (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 KrĂĆŸovĂĄ cesta kocĂĄrovĂ©ho kocĂho (The Coachmenâs Calvary, 1977) Arboretum (1987) and KocicĂ ĆŸivoty (Cat Lives, 1997). Her biography of VĂĄclav 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 dzejoÄŒi (A Cold and Other Poems, 1971), BiszÄles (1976), Tagadnes (Presents, 1990), and Mana latviskÄ ikdiena (My Everyday Latvian Life, 1994), were written in a more minor key, yet the authorâs scepticism and irony is present here as well â 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 BÄrziĆĆĄ. 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.
(b. 1964) is an Estonian poet who has published ten books of poetry and three collections of essays that include literary criticism as well as writings concerning art and cinema. He has been teaching literary and cultural theory at the Estonian Institute of Humanities since 1990. In 2001 Krull founded a poetry translation review Ninniku (www.eki.ee/ninniku/) and in 2003 there followed a book series - Ninniku Raamatukogu. He has translated poetry from French (André Breton, René Char, Francis Ponge, Bernard Noël, Edmond JabÚs, Mohammed Dib, Amina Said, Tahar Ben Jelloun), English (Sylvia Plath, Frank O'Hara, Rita Dove, Michael Ondaatje, Nissim Ezekiel, Kamala Das, Sujata Bhatt, Allen Ginsberg, Charles Bernstein, John Berryman, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams), Dutch (Cees Nooteboom, Hans van de Waarsenburg, Arjen Duinker, Diana Ozon), German (Michael Augustin), Finnish (Caj Westerberg, Tomi Kontio, Jouni Tossavainen, Tapani Kinnunen, Saila Susiluoto), Swedish (Claes Andersson) and Spanish (Pablo Neruda). Krull has acquired several prizes for poetry and criticism from the Estonian literary reviews, the Annual Prize of the Cultural Endowment of Estonia for essays in 1998 and 2007, the Annual Prize of the Cultural Endowment of Estonia for poetry in 2002, the Baltic Assembly Prize for literature in 2005 and the Tallinn University Literary Prize in 2007. Anthological pieces from his poetry have been translated into Finnish, Swedish, Dutch, English, French, German, Spanish, Slovenian, Russian, Galician and Latvian.
(1970) is a poet, translator from Italian, and lecturer at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. She is known for her translation of Danteâs 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.
(1978) holds an M.A. in Turkish and Islamic studies and a Ph.D. in non-Western literatures from Charles University in Prague. He held long-term graduate scholarships at the universities in Berlin, Ankara, Istanbul and Princeton. He currently teaches Turkish and Turkish literature at Charles University and continues to pursue research into Turkish literature from the late-Ottoman and early Republican eras. His translation of Orhan PamukÂŽs novel My Name is Red into Czech was awarded the prestigious 2008 Magnesia Litera award for the best literary translation of the year.
(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. Langaâs 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. 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. She 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 ÀkkiÀ 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 EnsimmÀinen 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.
was born in Switzerland in 1955, and grew up in Beijing. He was one of the first group of young âundergroundâ poets, who published the literary magazine Jintian. Yang Lianâs poems became well-known and influential inside and outside of China in the 1980s, especially when his poem âNorlangâ was criticized by the Chinese government during the âAnti-Spiritual Pollutionâ movement. Yang Lian was invited to visit Australia and New Zealand in 1988 and became a poet in exile after the Tianâanmen massacre. Since that time, he has continued to write and speak out as a highly individual voice in world literature, politics and culture. Yang Lian has published ten selections of poems, two selections of prose and many essays in Chinese. His work has also been translated into more than twenty languaes, including English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Eastern European languages. His thoughtful and inspired works have been called âone of the most representative voices of Chinese literatureâ. Yang Lian has been living in London since 1997. Yang Lian was one of the founders of Independent Chinese PEN Club, the unique and the only organisation of Chinese writers whom live inside and outside of China, he was elected a board member of International PEN in 2008.
GearĂłid Mac Lochlainnâs 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 ClochĂĄn), Na ScĂ©alaithe (CoiscĂ©im), Sruth Teangacha/ Stream Of Tongues (ClĂł Iar Chonnachta), Rakish Paddy Blues (limited edition published by Open House Festival).
was born in 1972. He graduated from the chemistry department of Moscow State University, but discarded this background and moved into advertising and freelance journalism. Lvovsky has published the poetry collection White noise, (1996), collection of short stories A word on flowers and dogs (2003), mixed collection of poetry, translations and prose poetry Three months of year two (2003), poetry collections Poems about motherland (2004), Camera Rostrum (2008) and novel The half of the sky (in co-authorship with Linor Goralik, 2004). Lvovsky is also the author of numerous translations from English (Vytautas Pliura, Charles Bukovsky, Leonard Cohen, Diane Thiel and others), both published and uncollected. Stanislav Lvovsky is also well known by regular appearances in periodicals (literature critisism and journalism) and a lot of Internet publications. Lvovsky was awarded at the 3rd Festival of Russian Free Verse and is also a laureate of «Moscow count» poetry prize (2003, the best poetry book of the year, published in Moscow). Poems by Stanislav Lvovsky were translated and published in English, French, Chinese, Italian, Georgian and other languages.
was born in Kinshasha, Congo, in 1970. He studied English Literature and Media Theory in England and Scotland. He lives in Athens and works as a journalist for the newspaper Kathimerni. He has published two novels: Body against body (2005) and The Interrogation (2008). He has travelled extensively and is the recipient of a US German-Marshal award. Maglinis has translated works by Ernest Hemingway, Philip Roth, Elia Kazan,Terry Eagleton, Mark OâSullivan and Pat Barker. His work in included in several Greek anthologies.
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 dâOlga ArbĂ©lina and Requiem pour lâEst. His last novel, La musique dâune vie, sweeps over decades of Russian history as a background to the story of a young pianist.
was born in 1975 in Koper, a town in the bilingual locale of Slovenian Istria where he still lives and works. He graduated in comparative literature and literary theory from the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana. He writes poetry, short prose, literary reviews and essays. His main focus is translating contemporary Italian authors such as Cesare Pavese, Antonio Tabucchi, Dario Fo, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Andrea Zanzotto, F. T. Marinetti, Eugenio Barba, Pier Vittorio Tondelli, Dino Buzzati, Franco Loi, Alda Merini, Paolo Ruffilli, Edoardo Erba and many others.
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 1976 and grew up in Pontneddfechan, south Wales. His first Welshâlanguage novel, Cadw dyffydd, brawd, written while a student at Aberystwyth, won the Arts Council of Wales' Welsh Book of the Year award in 2001. His second novel, Dyn yr Eiliad (The Other Man), was shortâlisted for the same prize in 2004 and, according to one reviewer, is "a landmark in recent Welsh fiction". His most recent book is Dolenni Hud, a collection of six short stories set in âWelshâ towns in the United States, produced in collaboration with photographer Simon Proffitt and accompanied by Cymru Arall / Parallel Wales, an installation shown at The LAB in San Francisco in 2008. Owen Martell works also as a translator. His adaptation of Martin Crimp's Attempts on Her Life will be produced by the Sherman Cymru theatre, Cardiff, in summer/autumn 2009. www.owenmartell.com
holds BA and MA Degrees from the University of Malta and a Ph.D. (English) from Edinburgh University, Scotland. His tenure at the University of Malta included appointments as Head of Department of English and Dean of the Faculty of Arts. In 1982-3, he was MaĂźtre des Conferences at the National University of the Ivory Coast. In 1984-5 he was Scholar in Residence at Michigan State University. Returning to Malta, he became the first Director of the Communication Programme and the Centre for Distance Learning as well as Coordinator of the American Studies Programme. He is Consultant Editor of Encyclopaedia of Commonwealth Literature (Routledge); World Literature in English WLWE (University of Toronto Press); The Commonwealth Novel in English (University of Texas at Arlington); Journal in Mediterranean Studies (University of Malta); He was on the Adjudicating Panel of The Commonwealth Poetry Prize (1985), and Chairman, Commonwealth Writersâ Prize (2005). Prof. Daniel Massa is a leading Maltese poet who has published poetry collections in both English and Maltese. His poems, many of which appeared in various anthologies, are published in Xibkatuliss.
(Tortosa, 1961) has a PhD in Scenic Arts. Her multiple artistic activities involve different forms of art, such as poetry, essays, theatre and translation. She has produced more than twenty scenic poetry performances, in collaboration with renowned musicians. Several of her records have been proclaimed as outstanding, such as El meu amor sense casa (My Love without Home), based on the poems of Maria MercĂš Marçal and music by Toti Soler, and Per molts anys i Bon profit (Many Happy Returns and Bon AppĂ©tit), with the poems of Miquel MartĂ i Pol and music by Toti Soler, which won the yearâs best Catalan record award in 2000. In 2006, she published her first poetry collection, Amurada (Tacking, 2006).
born in 1979 in KruĆĄevac, Serbia, graduated in Serbian language and literature at the School of Philology at the University of Belgrade. He is one of the founders and the editor of the TreÄi Trgliterary magazine ( www.trecitrg.org.rs), in Belgrade. He is also the founder of the Belgrade Poetry and Book Festival â Trgni se! Poezija! For several years he has been the secretary of the editorial of the magazines IstoÄnikand Poezija(Belgrade). He also writes poetry, and his poems have been published in magazines and anthologies in Serbia and Poland. His poems have been translated into Polish and included in an anthology of young Serbian poetry War and MP3 (Krakow, 2007). He lives and works in Belgrade.
was born in PoĆŸega, in 1978. He graduated in Seriban Literature at the School of Philology of the University of Belgrade. He writes poetry and essays. He has published two poetry collections, Stone pieces and The Suitcases of Jim Jarmusch. He also publishes his works in magazines ( Mostovi, KnjiĆŸevna reÄ TreÄi Trg, Letopis Matice srpske, KnjiĆŸevni magazin, Beogradski knjiĆŸevni Äasopis, Polja, Koraci, Povelja, Ulaznica). His poems have also been included in several poetry anthologies, and translated to Polish language (Magazines Portret and Fragile: Anthology of Young Serbian Poetry).
was born in eastern Turkey in 1968 and raised in Kurdish and Turkish. She published her first volume of poems, âMansions full of breezesâ 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, âMake sure God does not see my lettersâ, 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 Lórånt Etövös University, Budapest. His works include six plays, six novels and a collection of short stories. Mårton 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 MĂĄrio Soares, Caetano Veloso, Adriana Calcanhotto, AntĂłnio Ramos Rosa, Artur do Cruzeiro Seixas, Ferreira Gullar. He co-edits the literary magazine Apeadeiro. www.valterhugomae.com
was born in Angola, grew up in Paços de Ferreira in the north of Portugal, and has lived in Vila do Conde since 1981. He has an undergraduate degree in law and a graduate degree in Modern and Contemporary Portuguese Literature. He has published seven books of poety and three novels; edited anthologies of the poets Manoel de Barros, JosĂ© RĂ©gio, and AdĂlia Lopes, among others; and translated works from Italian and Spanish. He also dabbles in art: his first show, The Face of Gregor Samsa, took place in Porto in 2006. Valter Hugo MĂŁeâs first literary efforts were in poetry. A collection of his complete poetic work will appear in 2008 with the title Folclore Ăntimo [intimate folklore]. His first work of fiction, Nosso reino [our kingdom], came out in 2004. The DiĂĄrio de NotĂcias, a very important daily newspaper, called it the best Portuguese novel published that year. Valter Hugo MĂŁe was awarded the JosĂ© Saramago Prize in 2007. O apocalipse dos trabalhadores [The workersâ apocalypse], is a portrait of our time centered on a group of ordinary people living ordinary lives in search of their personal paradise. They are afflicted by the hope of someday achieving happiness, or lacking hope altogether. It is the story of Maria da Graça, a cleaning woman in a provincial city, whose ambition is to die for love. 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 Pilgrimâs 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 "DenĂk rychlĂ©ho ÄlovÄka" (Journal of a Fast Man) was published in autumn 2007.
was born in Istanbul in 1977. After completing his university education at the Civil Engineering Department of the Bosphorus University, he worked as a Human Resources Specialist. His short stories for young people as well as his book reviews were published in literary magazines such as E Edebiyat, Varlık, Altyazı, and Kitap-lık. In 1995, he received the Ä°stek Foundation Alumni Associationâs Ä°ffet Esen Short Story Award. The first book, of his four-book series with the title Legends of Perg, was Korkak ve Canavar ( The Coward and the Beast) published in 2002. The story takes place in the fantastic land of Perg, a place created by the author through a successful synthesis of Eastern and Western cultures. Its sequel Merderan'ın Sırrı ( Merderanâs Secret) was published in the same year and the third book, Bataklık Ălke ( Boggy Land) came out in 2004. The Perg series, published by Metis Edebiyat, also the publisher of The Lord of the Rings and the Earthsea series in Turkey, came to an end after the fourth book. The last book of the series, Tanrıların Alfabesi ( The Alphabet of the Gods) was published in February 2005. Following Legends of Perg, the author has written two novels in different genres. His novel Ćakird( The Disciple), which is about young missionaries of Islam, was published in October 2005. KardeĆ Kanı ( Brothers Blood), a thriller about street children and organized crime was published in 2006. His books have been translated into Polish and Bulgarian. Baris Mustecaplioglu has lately been working in cooperation with the illustrator Engin Deniz ErbaĆ from Bilgi University in order to visualize the Land of Perg. The author also writes reviews and essays for various magazines. He is currently working on a new novel which he plans to get published in the first months of 2009. www.barismustecaplioglu.com
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 siÚcle (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 Schlinkâs The Reader. His translations of Stella Rottenbergâs poetry have been published in a bi-lingual edition as Shards .
(CastellĂł 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 mĂłn (The Details of the World, 2005). He has also published the poetry collections El bell paĂs 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 AssociaciĂł 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 childrenâs poetry under the pseudonym Adula. She has been awarded several prizes for her work, including the most prestigious prize for childrenâs 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 Haâaretz. 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 organisationâs 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 CĂĄrpatos (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 AlegrĂa 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 PrĂ©mio 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 TangĂvel (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 Ljubljana in 1958. He is a poet, writer, translator, editor of a small press and director of the Center for Slovenian Literature. MozetiÄ 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
(Ljubljana, 1958) is a poet, writer, translator, editor of a small press and director of the Center for Slovenian Literature. MozetiÄ has translated a number of French authors (Rimbaud, Genet, Foucault, Maalouf and contemporary poets). He has published twelve poetry and three fiction books. He edited an anthology of homoerotic poetry of the 20th century and an anthology of homoerotic motives in Slovenian literature. His books are translated into several languages.
is an Emirati poet currently living in Dubai. She has published four volumes of poetry in Arabic: Here, I Lost the Time (1997), You, Alone (1999), Haâ of the Absent (2003) and Perhaps Here (2008). Her poems are founded on a desire to change the world through Sufism, and are influenced by her scientific outlook. In 2008, Khulood was the first Gulf poet to win the Buland Al Haidari Award for Young Arab Poets at the Aseela International Cultural Festival in Morocco. She maintains a prominent presence in the Gulf poetry scene, participating in cultural events and having her work published in Arabic newspapers and magazines.
is a writer and artist. She was born in India, raised in Manchester and Leicester and lives and works in Scotland. Mundair is the author of A Choreographer's Cartography, Lovers, Liars, Conjurers and Thieves and The Algebra of Freedom. She is a Rolex Mentor and Protégé Award nominee, a Robert Louis Stevenson Award winner and was identified recently by the BBC/Royal Court Theatre as one of the 'next generation of promising new writers in Britain'. Her artworks have been exhibited at the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, City Art Gallery, Leicester and Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin. The Independent newspaper wrote in a review of her work "Raman Mundair is a rare breed: a poet whose writing works on the page and the stage. Her readings reveal the secret music of the poem⊠Mundair is literature at its best: thoughtful, provocative and sharp." www.ramanmundair.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 HikĂąyat (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 RojhilatĂȘ DilĂȘ 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 Ăador (Chador) will be published in French and Italian. Munganâs trilogy of plays, âThe Mesopotamian Trilogyâ 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 KĂąÄıt TaĆ KumaĆ (Paper Stone Fabric, 2007) a play in three parts; BĂŒyĂŒmenin TĂŒrkçe 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 Kanafaniâs short story âthe Land of Sad Orangesâ 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 âthe Silentâ appeared in the âBook for Burningâ. Walid is currently teaching the Arabic language at University of Malta.
is counted among the most remarkable voices in Arabic poetry. She works as journalist, and architect. Born in Cairo in 1964, she graduated in 1987 from the faculty of Engineering at Ein Shams University, Cairo. She has published 15 books so far: six poetry collections, six translated anthologies from English into Arabic, and three books of criticism. She translated into Arabic the novels and stories of Virginia Woolf, John Ravenscroft, Chimamanda Nagozi Adichie, in addition to tens of British and American contemporary poets. She writes four constant weekly columns in press for newspapers in Egypt and the Middle East. She won the first prize of the "Arabic Poetry 2006" competition in Hong Kong, for her fifth poetry collection, A Bottle of Glue, a Chinese/English edition (Nadwah Press, 2007). She has represented the name of Egypt at several international festivals and conferences in Europe, Latin American, and Middle East. Some of her poetry collections were the issue of some academic masters and doctorates degrees. And her poetry has been translated into several languages such like: English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Chinese, Persian, and Kurdish.
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 âNachiketaâ), 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 â Madhyampurush Ekvachan (2005) translated and published in English (2007), Tamil (2008) and German (2009), a play â No Entry: Maa Pravisha (2008) and a collection of one-acts â 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 lâopĂ©ra 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 Writersâ 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 CafĂ© 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 GarcĂa MĂĄrquez, Vargas Llosa, CortĂĄzar, 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 Chileâs president, for her translation of Pablo Nerudaâs poetry.
is an Icelandic poet and novelist. He has published three novels and five books of poetry, his most recent book GĂŠska (Kindness) was published in 2009. As well as writing text-on-page he works with performance and sound poetry and regularly appears at poetry and music festivals. Icelandic critics have found reason to compare him to such dissimilar writers as Snorri Sturluson and Vladimir Mayakovsky. In his poetry EirĂkur explores the possibilities inherent in the European and North-American avant-garde traditions, focusing on disassembling language into its visual, social and linguistic units. His novels investigate the relationship between the social, the mental and the political by creating pseudohysterical situations for pseudo-hysterical characters. EirĂkur is a founding member of the NĂœhil poet cooperative and instigator of the NĂœhil International Poetry Festival. He is also an avid translator of foreign literature. In 2008 EirĂkur received the Icelandic Translation Award for his translation of Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem. Among other books he has translated the selected poems by Allen Ginsberg and an anthology of foreign contemporary and experimental poetry.
was born in 1973. She has studied American Literature in the University of Istanbul. Her poems have been published in various magazines since 1997. Her first book Diary of The Storm was published in 2006. She lives in Istanbul.
was born in 1957 Tekirdag and graduated from Ä°stanbul University Communications Faculty. Has been living in Ä°stanbul since 1976 and has worked as a publishing editor. His first book of poetry AteĆli Kaval was published in 1981. Among his other works are ĂıngıraÄın ĂlĂŒmĂŒ (1983), RĂŒzgar Durdurma Takvimi (1985) and Zaman Haritası (1991) which was awarded the the 1992 Cemal SĂŒreyya 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.
âs 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.
b. 1956 in Tel Aviv, has published eight volumes of poetry. His poems have been translated into more than 40 languages and published in anthologies, poetry journals and nine books in Europe and the U.S. His latest books in English are "Poem" (Dedalus 2004), "Day" (Dedalus 2006) and the bilingually written "Plates from the Museum of Time" (ArtAark 2009). He has also published a fictional epic in metered prose, "The Song of Tahira" (2001) and five volumes of his own translations into Hebrew. Or is the 2000 recipient of the Pleiades honour for having made "a significant contribution to modern world poetry". He has been awarded the Bernstein Prize, the Fulbright Award for Writers and the Israeli Prime Ministerâs Poetry Prize. For his translations from ancient Greek he was awarded the Culture Minister Prize. Among his awards are the fellowships of Iowa University, the Centre of Jewish Studies Oxford, the Literarische Colloquium Berlin, the Heinrich Böll Foundation Ireland, and Hawthornden Castle Scotland. In his youth he lived in Holland and India, worked as a builder and a restauranteer, and founded a meditation centre and commune in Jerusalem. Or has studied Philosophy and Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and later on taught there Ancient Greek Religion. He has taught poetry and creative writing at Helicon Poetry School as well as in universities in Israel, Japan and Europe. He has published numerous essays of poetry, classic studies, and comparative religion. Since its foundation in 1990, Or has been chief editor of the Helicon Society for the Advancement of Poetry in Israel. He is Editor of Helicon Journal and its series of poetry books, and international editor of Atlas poetry magazine. Or has founded and developed the Hebrew-Arabic Helicon Poetry School. He is Artistic Director of the âShaâar" International Poetry Festival and serves as National Coordinator for âPoets for Peaceâ (the UN sponsored UPC venture). www.amiror.co.il/
was born in Oñati, the Basque Country, in 1956. His first album âHautsi da Anphoraâ 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.
lectured in the Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies at Bogazici University for fifteen years before retiring recently. She was the first academic to be awarded a professorship in Translation Studies in Turkey in 1995. Her two principal fields of research are Ottoman and Modern Turkish Translation History and History of Translated Turkish Literature into English. As a literary translator, she has collaborated with Ruth Christie and Mel Kenne on the English versions of three novels by Latife Tekin, Berji Kristin Tales from the Garbage Hills (1993, several reprints), Dear Shameless Death (2001) and Swords of Ice (2007), all published by Marion Boyars. She has also edited and co-translated Ash Divan, Selected Poems of Enis Batur (2006), published by Talisman House, USA. With colleagues from the Cunda International Workshop for Translators of Turkish Literature, she now co-translating and editing a volume of Gulten Akin's poetry, also for Talisman House. Prof. Paker initiated the Cunda Workshop in 2006 with the financial support of the Turkish Ministry of Culture. The third workshop was held in June 2008. With a grant from the EU Culture 2007 Programme, the Cunda Workshop is now a co-partner of Literature Across Frontiers.
(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 Keysâ bilingual book Conversations with Tertium Quid and in Menke Katzâs bilingual book Selected Poems. The Welsh poet, Menna Elfynâs bilingual book of poetry, Veiled Kiss, translated by PaliulytÄ 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 âYoung Yotvingianâ award for the best first book of poetry and for the bilingual book of Menna Elfynâs poetry translations in 2005. In 2007 she also received the literary award âMenadaâ from the International Poetry Festival âDitet E Naimitâ in Macedonia. Currently PaliulytÄ is completing a book of Emily Dickinsonâs 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. PaliulytÄ 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 Grammatikosâ Truants in 1996. He has published a collection of short stories, I enochi ton ylikon (The Materialsâ 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 âsavage, inhospitable planetâ 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 âartistâs geneâ that can scientifically prove beyond any doubt the presence or absence of real talent. Panayotopoulosâ work has been translated into German, Italian and English, and a French edition of his second novel is being prepared by Gallimard.
(1985) is currently a student and the chief editor of the group and literary newspaper I.D.I.O.T., where he publishes poetry, drawings, plays and theoretical writings. In September 2008, his first play, DREAM 59, premiered in Glej Theatre, Ljubljana. His first book of poetry, ENERGYMACHINE, was published by Aleph in May 2010.
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 dâAndorra, 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 tornarĂ s a Ătaca, Ulises (You Will Never Go Back To Itaca, Ulysses), and Entre lâaigua i la pedra (Between the Water and the Stone). In 2001 he was awarded the Tristaina Prize for journalism with his chronicle Deu anys dâAndorra, 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 MarĂas, Bernardo Atxaga, NĂșria Amat, Ferlosio SĂĄnchez, JesĂșs 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 Scotlandâs 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 âgreenâ 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 â 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 MiliÄ. 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: ParĂsarhjĂłl (The Big Wheel of Paris, 1998), BlĂĄr ThrĂhyrningur (Blue Triangle, 2000) and Naeturstadur (Night Lodging, 2002). His first book of memoirs, MinnisbĂłk (Book of Memory) was published in 2007. He has produced award-winning features Ă hjara veraldar (Rainbow's End) and Svo ĂĄ jördu sem ĂĄ himni (As in heaven) by KristĂn JĂłhannesdĂłttir, 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 Ć tudent 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 PriĆĄleki series; her second book, Utrip oranĆŸnih luÄi 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; Ć erpa 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 AurÚlia 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, âThe Zoo Fatherâ (Seren, 2001) and âThe Huntressâ (Seren, 2005), were both shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and were both Books of the Year in the Times Literary Supplement. âThe Zoo Fatherâ was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and a Book of the Year in the Independent. It won a major Arts Council of England Writersâ Award and a New London Writersâ 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 âHeart of a Deerâ (Enitharmon, 1998), and she has co-edited the first anthology from The Poetry School, âTying the Songâ (Enitharmon, 2000). A prizewinning pamphlet âThe Wounded Deer â Fourteen poems after Frida Kahloâ (Smith Doorstop) also appeared in 2005. www.pascalepetit.co.uk
(1978) graduated from Vilnius Pedagogical University with a degree in Lithuanian language and literature. He has been publishing his poems in the literary press since 2001. The D of Doggedness (2004), his first collection of poetry, was well received by critics and was awarded two prestigious prizes for a first book of poetry â the Druskininkai Poetic Fall Prize in 2004 and the Zigmas GÄlÄ Prize in 2005. PetroĆĄiusâ poetry is characterised by an insistent aesthetic of the fixation of the past and recording of memory, which produce energy in the here-and-now of the writing. The subjectâs states of becoming, unboundedness, and lack of identity along with absurd experiences are important to his poetry. The lyrical subject is further distinguished by its ironic self-reflection and withdrawn insularity. Poetic discourse is articulated through a current of association creating the impression of incompleteness, impulsiveness, and a stream of spontaneous thoughts. The theme of love is revealed through motifs of dependence on suffering and liberation, melancholy emotion, and feelings of self-determination. Poetic images have a cinematographic organisation. Aside from poetry, PetroĆĄius writes essays that are published in essay anthologies and on the Internet. He lives in Vilnius.
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.
(1986) is a young poet and translator currently studying in Tartu University, Estonia. Her main subjects are anthropology, comparative religion, folklore and literature. She has published her poetry in literature magazines in Estonia and also abroad. Her first collection of poetry Finger-Pattern was published in 2006 and her second collection Voices in the Forest was published in April 2010. Her topics include nature, landscapes and people from home and abroad. She has translated poetry from English (Rita Dove, Nolan Eskeets and April Chavez), Spanish (Pablo Neruda), Norwegian (Tor Ulven, Gro Dahel, Kristian Bergquist, Rune Tuverud) and from German (Michael Augustin). Most of the translations have been published in online poetry translation magazine Ninniku.
is a translator from Spanish, specializing in contemporary Latin-American fiction. His published translations include 15 novels (by such authors like Jorge Franco, Rodrigo FresĂĄn, Jaime Bayly, Edmundo Paz SoldĂĄn, Pablo De Santis, Santiago Roncagliolo, TomĂĄs Eloy MartĂnez and others) and several short stories. He works for the Polish Book Institute, teaches contemporary Latin-American literature at the Jagiellonian University in KrakĂłw, 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 LiterĂĄrnĂ 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 PrĂĄvo. In her book Sul, ovce a kamenĂ (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.
was born in Ljubljana in 1974 and graduated in philosophy from the University of Ljubljana. He has published his poems in various literary magazines in Slovenia and abroad. Aleph Press published his first two collections of poetry, Naselitve (States, 1997) and Vrtoglavica zanosa (Joy in Vertigo, 2002). In co-authorship with the poet PrimoĆŸ ÄuÄnik and Ćœiga KariĆŸ, a painter, an experimental book on New York City entitled Oda na manhatenski aveniji (Ode on Manhattan Avenue, 2003) came out with Sherpa Press. It was followed by his collection Milijon sekund bliĆŸe (A Million Seconds Closer, 2006). His latest book, Vesela nova uĆĄesa (Happy New Ears, 2010) was also published by Sherpa Press. A selection of his work was published in Six Slovenian Poets (Arc Publication, 2006). He is is a host on radio shows on culture on Radio Slovenija and translates contemporary American poetry (C. Hawkey, L. Solomon, P. Killebrew, A. Berrigan among others), edits the Slovenian side of poetry web-site lyrikline (www.lyrikline.org). Podlogar occasionally performs as a DJ and drinks green 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 IdĆntĂșli hĂ©tmĂ©teres (Seven Metres Beyond Time â novel trilogy, 2004), Ahogy a kisnyĂșl elkĂ©pzelte (Just How The Little Rabbit Imagined Things To Be â children's stories, 2005) and IdegpĂĄlyĂĄim emlĂ©kezete (The Memory Of My Nerve Pathways â 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 1984 in Split, Croatia. He graduated in Comparative Literature and History at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb. At the same university he is currently attending PhD studies in literature, culture, performing arts and film. He has been regularly publishing poetry, essays, and literary criticism in Croatian and foreign magazines and newspapers, online, as well as on Channel 3 of Croatian radio. He has published two poetry collections: Twisters over the Santa Cruz (AGM, 2006), `Navrh jezika' prize, for the best poetry manuscript by an author younger than 35 (2005), `Kvirin' prize, for the best poetry book (2006); second edition, in electronic form, available online at www.elektronickeknjige.com (2009), and Epistles to Common People (Algoritam, 2007, shortlisted for the `Kiklop' prize for the poetry book of the year (2008). He is an editor of Quorum, a literary magazine, and Zarez, a biâweekly for cultural and social issues. He works for various publishers, editing poetry, translations, various non-fiction and theoretical editions. He is a programme board member of Goran's Spring, the oldest and most significant Croatian poetry festival. His poetry has been translated and published in English, German, Spanish, Polish, Hungarian, Slovenian, Bulgarian, Italian, Macedonian and Ukrainian, in foreign magazines and anthologies. Epistles to Common People (Botschaften an gewöhnliche Leute) is currently being translated for a German publisher. He takes part in various poetry festivals and events in Croatia, Europe and worldwide (Germany, Nicaragua, Austria, Venezuela, Poland, Belgium, Hungary, Slovenia, Italy, Serbia, etc.) He has been published translations from English, mostly of contemporary American poetry. He is a drummer in a postâpunk combo called Death Disco.
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 Peopleâs House, as the one-time dictator Ceausescuâs 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.
(born in 1986) is a composer and sound/intermedia artist. He is a performer and author of all kinds of events, from music concerts to multimedia performances, interactive installations etc. His focus is on exploring and revealing the principles of human perception through art by various means, as certain messages cannot be conveyed solely through logical language or through the language of art. His position is also reflected in his performances, which can take many different forms, the spectrum usually ranging from acoustic sounds to electronic and digital generations of sound, often including non-musical elements.
, writer and journalist, used to be the editor of the Quaderns weekly cultural supplement of the El PaĂs daily and currently works for the newspaper PeriĂłdico de Cataluña. He has published two books of short stories Armadillo Skin (Quaderns Crema, 1998), winner of the CrĂtica Serra dâOr 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. PuntĂ 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
(1976) is a writer and photographer. He earned a BA in English and Philosophy from Hull University in the UK, and since 1998 has worked as a reporter and cultural editor at Al-Ahram Weekly, the Cairo-based English-language newspaper. In 2008-09 he spent a year working as a features writer at Abu Dhabi-based daily The National. His reportage, travel writing, photography, fiction and poetry â written originally in both Arabic and English â have appeared in numerous publications in Cairo, Beirut, London, Berlin, Italy and the US, as well as online. Youssef Rakha has exhibited his photos at the Goethe Institute, Cairo, and has published four books in Arabic: a collection of short stories, Azhar Al-Shams (1999, Dar Sharqiyat), a photo travelogue, Beirut shi mahal (2006, Kitab Amkenah), and two books of travel writing with the Beirut-based Dar Riyad El Rayyes. His poems are soon to appear in a book entitled Kull Amakinina. He is currently working on his first novel.
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 JĂłzsef 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 SzekszĂĄrd in 1952. She is a member of a number of organisations such as SzĂ©pĂrĂłk TĂĄrsasĂĄga (The Literature Society), MAOE and PEN. She has published five collections of poetry: MĂĄshol (Elsewhere) 1985, A darĂĄzs szeme (Eye of the Wasp) 1990, ZadarnĂĄl a tenger (The Sea by Zadar) 1997, Arc poĂ©tika, 2006, Mindenhol jĂł (Everywhereâs Good) 2007. Her works have been published in Switzerland in German (translated by AndrĂĄs SĂĄndor) 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), Ćwiat i AntyĆwiat (World and Anti-world, 2003) and Kolonie (Colony, 2006), and the epic poem DwanaĆcie 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 PoupĂ©e, anale nationale (1998), the novel Moha mâaime (1999), inspired by her time spent in Morocco, and Nus devant les fantĂŽmes (2000) a fictional account of Milena JesenskĂĄâs relationship with Franz Kafka, remembered during the winter of 1944 in the concentration camp of RavensbrĂŒck. 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
studied in Frankfurt and Istanbul and holds a Master's degree in Turkish and Islamic studies. He has worked as translator and bibliographer. Since the early seventies he has been focussing on contemporary Turkish literature, especially on literature written by Turks living in Germany and Turks writing about Germany. His study Das Deutschlandbild in der modernen tĂŒrkischen Literatur (The Image of Germany in Modern Turkish Literature) was published in 1983, and the annotated bibliography Ăber das Leben in Bitterland. Bibliographie zur tĂŒrkischen Deutschlandliteratur (Life in Bitterland: A Bibliography of Turkish Literature concerned with Germany) in 1990, and is being currently updated. He has translated texts by many well-known Turkish authors including three novels by ZĂŒlfĂŒ Livaneli, Halid Ziya UĆaklıgil's novel Verbotene Lieben (Forbidden Loves) and three anthologies of Turkish short stories, which appeared in the bilingual series of the Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag (dtv).
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 âa writer of oral communicationâ. 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.
was born at 5th April 1972. in Belgrade, Serbia. Since 1998-2004 she lived in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Now she lives in Belgrade. She graduated in Serbian language and literature on Faculty of Philology, Belgrade. She has been publishing her poetry since the age of eighteen, and has participated in several festivals of poetry in Serbia, Macedonia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Hercegovina. Since now she has been published five books of poetry: Snovidna voda (Dreamwater), 1994; UĆŸe od peska (Rope of sand), 1997; Zabava za dokone kÄeri (Party for lazybones daughters), 1999; Ćœivot na razglednici (Life on a postcard), 2003; Oko nule, (Round the Zero) 2006; Her poetry was translated in several languages: Slovenian, Macedonian, German, English, Slovakian, Sweden, Polish and is represented in several anthologies. Her books were translated on Slovenian language ( Ćœivljenje na razglednici, 2005, Ljubljana, Slovenia), Slowakian (Pred tridsiatkou, 2001, Banska Bystrica, Slowakia), and German language ( So dunkel, so hell, 2007, Salzburg, Austria.) Poetry awards: â Book award - Branko RadiÄeviÄ for the best first book of poetry in Serbia (for the book Dreamwater), 1994. â Book award - Branko MiljkoviÄ (for the book Party for the Lazybone Daughters), 2000. â German award - Hubert Burda Preis for the best young East and South European poetry, 2005. Fellowships: Fellowship of German foundation Literarisches Coloquium Berlin, under the program for East European writers and journalists, in January 2005. She is member of: Srpsko knjiĆŸevno druĆĄtvo (Serbian Association of Writers), Serbian P.E.N. Center, and Association of Literary Translators of Serbia and an active translator from Slovenian and English language. Since now she has been translated ten prose and poetry books from Slovenian language, and one book from English language (Toby Litt, Exhibitionism, 2006).
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 childrenâs 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.
is a poet, novelist and playwright. He is one of Portugalâs most prolific and acclaimed dramatists. Born in NazarĂ© in 1949, he studied at Lisbon University. During the last years of dictatorship, he was exiled to France, from where he returned to Portugal after the Revolution in 1974. He then began his thirty-year-long career as a journalist. Today, he is a full-time writer. He has published many poetry collections, including a tetralogy of poems, Tetralogia da Assombração (The Haunting Tetralogy). His theatre works include The Third Floor, Six Women under Surveillance and White Man, Black Man, all of which have won major theatre awards in Portugal.
(born 1960) is a German writer and filmmaker. He was a student of Philosophy, Anthropology and Psychology at the Free University of Berlin. His anthropological field research was conducted in Israel and the Palestinian territories (1987,1991), Yemen (1993-1994), the United States and Mali. The main subject of Roes' poetical and academic work is the role of the "stranger" or the "foreigner" in our societies. The European view of the Arab world is one of the main topics in his major novels and recent films. His wide talent as a poet, novelist, play writer, essayist and film maker and his interest in outsiders puts him into the tradition of Jean Cocteau, Pasolini or Bruce Chatwin.
, born in 1959 in Tortosa, is a poet, writer and translator. His collected poems CĂłrrer la toronja (Run the Orange) were published in 2002, bringing together poetry published over twenty years, while in Lâestiu 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 MĂ€hren in the series Europa erlesen (Wieser Verlag, Klagenfurt 1997), and a special edition of Lichtungen magazine entitled Literature from Brno/BrĂŒnn.
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 DobrĂĄ adresa. Her first poetry book Ludwig was published to general acclaim in 1999. Her second, NenĂ nutnĂ©, abyste me navĆĄtÄvoval (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 Hughesâs Crow and Birthday Letters. Among his other translations are versions of Roald Dahlâs 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 DiviĆĄ in 2000. Arne Ruste lives in Son, a small fishing village near Oslo.
born in 1966, is an Indian poet writing in Kannada language. She has four collections of poems of poems, four plays and a collection of essays on Gender, Language, Literature and Culture for her credit. She has conducted theatre and poetry workshops in India and abroad, culminating with readings and productions for women, children and people from marginalized communities. Her poems are translated into many Indian languages including English, apart from Vietnamese, Cebuano, Spanish and French and have seen publication in various journals and poetry anthologies in those respective languages. As a poet, Mamta has participated in Poetry Africa, Medellin, Cuba, Vietnam and Granada poetry festivals. With a specialization in Comparative Literature, Gender Studies, Kannada Literature and Cultural Discourse, she teaches at the Centre for Kannada Studies, Jnana Bharathi, Bangalore University and lives in Bangalore, India.
is an editor, translator and co-founder of Metis Publications (founded 1982). She has commissioned and prepared for publication hundreds of books, both fiction and non-fiction, by local and international authors, acting as the commissioning editor and foreign rights manager of the company. She has been a member of the editorial board of translation journal Metis Ăeviri and of Defter, a critical thought quarterly. She has contributed to the organization of many seminars, conferences and symposiums relevant to her editorial work. She is the editor of World Tribunal on Iraq: Making the Case Against War (Metis, Turkey, 2006 and Olive Branch Press, USA, 2008) and co-editor of Waiting for the Barbarians: A Tribute to Edward Said (forthcoming in Fall 2008 by Metis, Turkey, and in Summer 2008 by Verso, UK). She has chaired the Writers in Prison Committee of Turkish PEN for many years and has acted as a peace and freedom-of-expression activist for over twenty years. Sökmen is a member of the Turkish Publishers Association, Turkish PEN and Alliance of Independent Publishers for an Alternative Globalization. She is currently co-chairing the Organizing Committee Guest of Honour Turkey Frankfurt Book Fair 2008.
âs 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.
was born in New York City in 1971 and has lived in Madrid, Spain since 1999. Writing in both Spanish and English, he is a prolific author and anthologist who has published over eighty books in many different genres. He has edited two anthologies of gay poetry: one in Catalan, Ells s'estimen. Poemes d'amor entre homes (1999), and one in English, Best Gay Poetry 2008, the first of an annual series. He has published translations into English of the gay Spanish poets: Luis Antonio de Villena, Luis MartĂnez de Merlo, Jesus Encinar, and Luis Cremades, among others.
, 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 förgĂ€ngligt Ă€r 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 workersâ 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 Pragueâs 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 SaidĂ, 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 Istanbulâs 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 Husseinâs 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 âa forgiving and powerful bookâ and The Independent as âan Arabic answer to Millerâs Tropic of Cancerâ.
was born in 1931 in Vancouver, Canada, and moved to Japan with her family just prior to World War II. In 1948, She entered the modernist poetry group VOU, led by the poet Katsue Kitazono, and published her first poetry collection in 1951. In the early 1960s, she started reading her poems at live jazz performances. Her publications include several books of poetry, which have been translated into many languages. She has been invited to readings all over the world, including poetry festivals and jazz festivals. She has also organized poetry events with poets such as Allan Ginsberg and Jehuda Amichai, whose works she has also translated. She has performed with musicians, dancers and artists, e.g. Kazuo Ono, Peter Brötzmann, Sam Rivers, Itaru Oki, and Aki Takase. She has received many major Japanese poetry prizes, including the prestigious Yomiuri Literary Prize and was also honoured with the Purple Ribbon Medal (Shijuhosho). Kazuko Shiraishi lives in Tokyo.
(1955) was born and grew up in HĂșsavĂk, north Iceland. After attending the Commercial College of Iceland in ReykjavĂk, he studied Icelandic language, music and acting. In 1977 he made his literary bebut with a book of poetry, ĂsĂĄnar lendur (Virgin Soil). Since then he has published 12 books of poetry and translated poetry, one novel and 10 childrenÂŽs books. Apart from books, he has also produced many recordings of his lyrics and songs. His most recent books of poetry are EyĂ°ibĂœli (Abandoned Farms) 2004, with photographs by Nökkvi Eliasson, and Hjartaborg (Borough of the Heart) 2007. Sigurdsson lives in ReykjavĂk 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.
born 1976, graduated from Zagreb Faculty of Philosophy with a degree in Comparative Literature and English Language and Literature, and also holds an MA in Gender Studies from the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest. She is a writer, translator, and a cultural, gender and film theorist. So far she has published a collection of short stories Adventures of Gloria Scott (AGM, Zagreb, 2005) and had numerous short stories published in Croatian and international literary magazines and similar publications such as Zarez, Vijenac, Quorum, Fantom slobode, Godine, Plima, Libra, Akt, Jutarnji list, Chroma Journal, Pulp.net, Studium, Literatura etc. Her stories have been included in several Croatian and international anthologies, such as Ekran stories, Queer stories, Best Croatian Stories of 2005, Na TreÄem trgu â Anthology of New Short Story in BiH, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro and translated into English, German, Polish and Slovenian. In 2006 she spent a month in Graz as an artist in residence, supported by the Internationales Haus der Autoren Graz. She is a member of the editorial team of Sextures, Eâjournal for Sexualities, Cultures and Politics, and on the editorial board of Ekviva â the regional women's web portal. She has translated several books into Croatian and English and regularly translates fiction and theory. As a journalist, cultural and film critic she writes for various Croatian and international publications. In 2008 she was voted best Croatian film critic.
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 ReykjavĂk 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 yearâs 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, SodankylĂ€, 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 pĂ€ivĂ€nlaskua 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, Sinnisaloâs 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 â or poem â 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 kÀvi tÀÀllÀn (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.
(1970) was born in Bratislava. Solotruk graduated in English and American studies and in Slovak literature at Comenius University, Bratislava, where he now teaches, after spending some years in television and advertising. He has studied in the Azusa Pacific University, California, and the University of Warwick, UK. Solotrukâs first book of poetry Silent Wars (1997) won the Slovak Literary Fund Best Debut Award. It was followed by Grinding (2001), Plankton of Gravity (2006), and Lovestory: Agens and Patiens (2007). His poems appeared in several anthologies in Germany, Ireland, Great Britain, Italy, Mexico, and the US, including A Fine Line: New Poetry From Eastern and Central Europe (Arc Publications, 2004) and New European Poets (Graywolf, 2008). Solotruk has read at festivals and events in numerous cities, including London, Vienna, Cracow, Berlin, Genova, Dublin, St. Andrews, Taipei, Firenze, Cartagena des Indias, San Jose, and elsewhere. He also translates poetry from English. His award winning book selections include works of Charles Simic, John Ashbery, and Ted Hughes.
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.
is a novelist and short fiction writer. He studied Civil Engineering and Philosophy at the University of Montenegro, and published one novel, Hansenova djeca ( Hansenâs Children, 2004), and two collections of short stories, Sve to ( All That, 2001) and Zimska potraga ( Winter Search, 2007). Hansenâs Children won a 2004 Mesha Selimovic Award (the best novel published in 2004 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia) He works as journalist for the independent daily press, Vijesti, in Podgorica.
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.
was born in 1982 in Sofia, Bulgaria. She graduated with a MA in Theory of Literature from Sofia University (2005-2006) with master thesis The genre of tragedy: Muthos and Doppelgangers. At present she is a PhD student at the Theory of Literature department where she is working on Event and Example in the order of Discourses for Literature: The Problem of Exemplarity Work which deals with the tension between literary examples and exemplarity work in philosophical and theoretical researches. Kamelia is a founder-member of the art-group Ustata (The Mouth), the purpose of which is to outline and visualise, to designate and enunciate the art of young artists. The art-group has organised poetry and visual medium events. She has published the collection of lyrics Parcel N: 17 ( Plot No17). Her works are translated in Danish, Croatian and German. As of 2009 she is the editor of Literaturen vestnik ( Literary Newspaper).
(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 RistoviÄ), she also writes film reviews and used to have a literary "chat-show" in Ljubljanaâs night club Daktari.
is a poet, translator, lecturer in literature and cultural manager. He has published poetry (Rapala is the latest volume, 2007) and prose, and has edited various works on Catalan literature and the city of Barcelona. He has translated novels, poetry and song lyrics from English. Subirana was a member of the board of PEN CatalÄ and founded and directed the website Lletra at the Open University of Catalonia. From 2004 to 2006 he was Director of the Institute of Catalan Literature. As an editor, he produced Wilkommen in Katalonien (DTV, 2007) and New Catalan Fiction (The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Dalkey Archive, Spring 2008), two selections of contemporary Catalan narrative. He keeps a blog entitled Flux. Subiranaâs latest book has deserved critiques such as the following, by Pere Calonge: âRapala uses a diversity of poetic forms to devise condense clean texts; poems of a great precision, brief but intense, like small bubbles which burst in the reader, thereby exuding a sensation, an image, an idea"
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 Doesnât 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 PetĆfi 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 translatorsâ 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 1960 and grew up in a small village in Slovenia. He graduated in sociology and comparative literature from the University of Ljubljana, and left for Belgium in 1984, where he started to work in the travel business. A job opportunity brought him to London in 1992 where he lives with his partner of 12 years. He co-wrote a satirical novel Spolitika (The Politics of Sex), which was published in 1999 and his first collection of poems Darilo (The Gift) was published in 2006. He reviews books for various magazines in Slovenia on a regular basis and is preparing his second collection of poems.
was born in Slovenia and lives in Barcelona. She has translated various Slovenian and Serbian authors into Catalan (MakaroviÄ, JanÄar, KiĆĄ, Pahor, MozetiÄ) and Catalan authors into Slovenian (Calders, Foix, Moncada, TodĂł), and has also published numerous literary studies in specialist reviews in Spain (Els Marges, LâEspill, Pasajes) and in Slovenia (Nova revija, Literatura, Dialogi). She is the author of Lâestirp de la solitud (Barcelona, Institut dâEstudis Catalans, 2003, and Ljubljana, Literatura, 2005), which won the Josep Carner prize for Literary Theory, and Lâatzar de la lluita. El concepte dâEuropa 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. Taratutaâs Russian-language publications include works of fiction (âOne Hundred and One Minutes,â 2007, âThe General Hygiene of Dr. Andreas,â forthcoming, âFishes and Frogs,â forthcoming), and an academic text titled âA Philosophy of Virtual Reality,â( 2007).
was born in 1971 in Mokrin, Serbia. His publications include the play Coated brain / Pohovani mozak (1995, 1996), the poetry collection Sveto Trojstvo Georgija Zecowskog (1997), the collection of short stories Sjajan naslov za pantomimu (1997), four novels, Antologija najboljih naslova (2000), Kazimir i drugi naslovi (2003), Kroz pustinju i praĆĄinu (2005, 2008), Kuvarove kletve i druge gadosti (2006) and a selection of columns, Alternativni vodiÄ kroz Vavilon (2008). In 2004, he was awarded the prestigious Borislav PekiÄ literary scholarship for the novel Kuvarove kletve i druge gadosti, which was shortlisted for the annual NIN award.
(1973) is a writer and columnist in Reykjavik, Iceland. Her debut collection of poetry, BlĂĄlogaland (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, SĂłlar 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 ForlagiĂ° 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 niÄlo (Bellow Zero), Na svojem dvoriĆĄÄu (In One's Own Backyard), Vzporednice (Parallels) and Äesa 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 PreĆĄeren'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. Ăstvaldur 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 Icelandâs leading bands, ranging from pop and rock to jazz, including the Reykjavik Big Band for 10 years. A few years ago Ăstvaldur 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. Ăstvaldur has always been a passionate teacher and has worked in many music schools in Reykjavik. He founded TĂłnheimar (âThe world of musicâ) which has become one of the most popular music schools in Iceland. In TĂłnheimar, the main emphasis is on improvisation, playing by ear and encouraging students to be spontaneous and creative. In 2005, Ăstvaldur 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. He lives in Athens. He has written the novels I Efevresi tis Skias (Kastaniotis, 2008), Paravoli (Kastaniotis 2006), O Vathmos diskolias (Indiktos 2004), Vathi pigadi (Indiktos 2003), I Sinandisi (Indiktos 2002). Konstantinos Tzamiotis has had several stories published in magazines and short storiesâ collections. His novel Sinandisi was translated into Italian in 2004. For his first play Oudeteri Zoni (2004) he won the âbudding play writersâ national award. He is editor of the political magazine Anti, and columnist in several newspapers and magazines. During the period 2002 - 2007 he was editor in chief of the cultural magazine Highlights and managing editor of the annual cultural review Stigmiotipa ellinikou politismou.
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 CrĂtica, and has been translated into Spanish and Portuguese.
(1954) was raised in ReykjavĂk, 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 ReykjavĂk (1870-1950); theater history (1900-1950); church history (19th century); historical biography (18th -19th century - see review in LâAtelier 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.
(1973) holds a PhD in Sociology from the the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. His area of research includes political, cultural and social dimensions of transformation of East-Central Europe and Lithuania in particular. He works as director of market research company European Surveys in Vilnius. His poetry has been published in the Lithuanian literary press since 1995 and his poems have been translated into Swedish, Latvian, Latgalian, Polish, English and Macedonian. His first volume of poetry, âSkrendant nelieka pÄdsakĆłâ [âNo Traces When Flyingâ], was published in Fall 2003 by the Publishing House of Lithuanian Writersâ Union. He translates poetry from English and Polish: Adrianne Rich, Menke Katz, Jerome Rothenberg, John Kinsella, Kerry Shawn Keys and Tomasz Rozycki are among the poets he has translated. He performs poetry with music and a live performance with Gerardo Beltran (Mexico), Kerry Shawn Keys (Lithuania-USA), Dmitry Prigov (Russia), composed by Vladimir Tarasov was recorded at the Druskininkai Poetry Autumn festival in 2003 and released in CD in 2009 (with Vladimir Tarasov â percussion; Juozas Rimas â oboe; Eugenijus KaneviÄius â contrabass). His poems in English can be found on www.thedrunkenboat.com/valionis.html
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 FĂŒst Milan Prize and Tibor DĂ©ry 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 CĂŽa in Portugal in 1962. He taught Literature and Linguistics at the University of Ăvora 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 (LĂŒbbe), 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 âAvereaâ. In 2002 she published her first volume âThe confessions of the distinguished lady m.â in the âCarmenâ underground series initiated by Un Cristian. She published the volume âPagesâ in the same year and her second volume, âFissuresâ, was issued by âPonticaâ 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, âNo Longer Poetry: new Romanian Poetryâ, 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, Goetheâs Faust, Wedekindsâ Lulu and BĂŒchnerâs Woyzeck.
poet, critic and translator, was born in 1979 in Riga and graduated in cultural theory from the Latvian Academy of Culture. Since 2004, he has been working on his doctoral thesis in the field of literary history at the Latvian University. His book reviews and essays regularly appear in Latvian press. VÄrdiĆĆĄ has translated the works of T. S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams and other modern American poets. VÄrdiĆĆĄ is often described as one of the most mature and outstanding representatives of the youngest generation of poets. He has been a published poet since 1997 and is the author of three poetry collections â âLedlauĆŸiâ (The Icebreakers, 2001), âBiezpiens ar krÄjumuâ (Cottage Cheese with Cream, 2004) and 'Es' (I, 2008). For several years he has worked as an editor for the Latvian Encyclopedia. VÄrdiĆĆĄâ poetry has been translated into several languages and included in the anthology of young poets from Central and Eastern Europe A Fine Line (Arc Publications, 2004). Selection of his poetry in Polish was published in 2009.
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 OâFaolĂĄin Awards, and âSurrenderâ 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 womenâs 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 KrakĂłw 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 SkuciĆska) 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 BogumiĆa Kielar (Zephyr Press, 2006). She co-edits PrzekĆadaniec, a refereed journal of literary translation published in KrakĂłw, Poland. She lives in Copenhagen.
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 TrĂ th 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 ShĂŹonach / 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, âbrings to life the history of the aboriginal Griqua people in a multi-layered reflection on the meanings of freedom and bondage in South Africaâ. 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 currently Reader in Residence at the Scottish Poetry Library and Edinburgh City Libraries. He runs a monthly âLiterary Cabaretâ called The Golden Hour and is an Editor at Forest Publications. His work has appeared in New Writing Scotland, The American Poetry Review, AGNI and Northwords Now. He lives in Edinburgh but is still an American. In 2010 he won Saltâs Crashaw Prize and his first collection will be released by the end of 2010. http://ryanvanwinkle.com/. Ryan is currently involved with the Word Express project for young writers and translators in South East Europe, visit www.word-express.org to find out more.
(born in 1953 in Egypt) is a British poet who grew up in Ghana. Woods began his teaching career at the University of Salerno. Since 1990 he has worked at Nottingham Trent University, where, in 1998, he was appointed Professor of Gay and Lesbian Studies, the first such appointment in the United Kingdom. He was awarded a PhD by the University of East Anglia in 1983, and a DLitt in 2006. Woods' main areas of interest are twentieth-century gay and lesbian literature; post-war gay and lesbian film and cultural studies; and the AIDS epidemic. In addition to his poetry collections, he is the author of a number of critical books, including Articulate Flesh: Male Homo-eroticism and Modern Poetry (1987) and A History of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition (1998). He has been a member of the board of directors of East Midlands Arts, a Midlands Regional darts champion (1995) and is a Fellow of the English Association.
(official name Liu Jun), poet, essayist, translator, was born in the City of Xuzhou, Jiangsu province, China, in 1963. He studied English literature at Peking University from 1981 to 1985, and later worked as an editor for the magazine Huangqiu (Globe Monthly) for eight years. He is now the professor of Classical Chinese Literature at the School of Liberal Arts, Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Xi Chuan is one of the most influencial poets in contemporay China. He has been well-known in the Chinese literary scene since his student days. In 1988, he founded, with friends, the unofficial poetry journal Qingxiang (Tendency), which was, however, banned after three issues. From 1990 to 1995 he worked as an editor for the unofficial magazine Xiandai Hanshi (Modern Chinese Poetry). He is now one of the two Chief-editors of the magazine Dangdai Gouji Shitan (Contemporay Poetry International). Xi Chuan has been awarded numerous prizes, including: in 1994, the Modern Chinese Poetry Prize; in 1999, one of the top ten winners at the Weimar International Essay Prize Contest; in 2001, the national Lu Xun Prize. A series of grants made his long visits abroad possible, in various places. He was the Curator for Chinese Poetry of the 2009 Frankfurt Bookfair.
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 âTemporary Public Art Projects â in Universitat der Kunsten, Berlin.
was born in Osaka, Japan in 1959 and grew up mostly in Hiroshima. His first book of poetry A Laughing Bug was published in 1991, followed by 8 more collections in Japan including Hijacking Logos (2010), Starboard of My Wife (2006), and Afternoon of Forbidden Words (2003), which won the prestigious Hagiwara Sakutaro Award. His poems have been translated into more than 15 languages, including 3 books published in Australia, Serbia, and Romania. Yasuhiro also writes essays, literary criticism, and translates poetry from English to Japanese. He is the editor of Poetry International Web â Japan http://japan.poetryinternational.org, and of a Japanese poetry magazine Beagle.
studied Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh College of Art and History of Art at The University of Edinburgh. After graduating she joined artistsâ 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 Marxâs 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 VolÄije noÄi (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 AutĂČnoma, 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, HaĆĄek, Capek, Seifert, Havel, Ć kvoreckĂœ, Kundera and Hrabal â and has received several prestigious awards for her work as translator. Her biography of the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal V rajskĂ© zahrade trpkĂœch 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 ugrĂĄsra kĂ©sz 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 âdictionary novelâ Az utolsĂł Ablak-ZsirĂĄf (The Last Window Giraffe, 1998) is based on a Hungarian childrenâs picture primer and describes growing up in Hungary and eastern Europe in the 1970s and 1980s in a humorous, playful way, reflecting the previous regimeâs 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 âinnocentsâ 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 âmillenniumâ 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.