(1960) first collection Now the Sky, Now the Dial was an immediate success, winning the Poetry Day Prize. Her second collection, Blow the Trumpet, Scorpion! (2001) was also highly regarded and received the 2002 Annual Award for Literature and the 2002 Best Designed Book Award. Langa’s poetry jars against previous post-war Latvian poetry in its absence of naivete and lack of use of the idyllic or a beautiful, lofty idealization of humanity; it is opposed to pathos. 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 äkkiä onkin toukokuu (And Suddenly Came May, 1976). She has an MPhil from the University of Helsinki, and in her thesis she analysed the work of Eeva Tenhunen, a Finnish detective writer. Lehtolainen started her own detective series with the novel Ensimmäinen murhani (My First Murder, 1993), which introduced her detective Maria Kallio. This vivid and original protagonist has brought a much awaited feminist angle to Finnish criminal fiction. To date Leena has published eight crime novels. Besides her career as author she works as a researcher and critic.
was born in Switzerland in 1955, and grew up in Beijing. He was one of the first group of young ‘underground’ poets, who published the literary magazine Jintian. Yang Lian’s poems became well-known and influential inside and outside of China in the 1980s, especially when his poem ‘Norlang’ was criticized by the Chinese government during the ‘Anti-Spiritual Pollution’ movement. Yang Lian was invited to visit Australia and New Zealand in 1988 and became a poet in exile after the Tian’anmen 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 “one of the most representative voices of Chinese literature”. 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.
Gearóid Mac Lochlainn’s work has won many awards at home and internationally and has been translated into several languages. He has been writer-in-residence at Queens University, Belfast and the University of Ulster. He was also the subject of a TG4 documentary Idir Dha Chomhairle (2007). Mac Lochlainn has worked extensively with the British Council and the Arts Council Northern Ireland. In 2007 he was also a fellow at The William Joiner Centre for the Study of War and Social Consequences at University of Massachusetts, Boston. He received the major Arts Council NI award for poetry in 2006. He has published four collections of poetry in Irish and English: Babylon Gaeilgeoir (An Clochán), Na Scéalaithe (Coiscéim), Sruth Teangacha/ Stream Of Tongues (Cló Iar Chonnachta), Rakish Paddy Blues (limited edition published by Open House Festival).
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.