Halina Ablamowicz is Associate Professor of Speech in the English Department at Tennessee Tech University. She studied Russian Language and Literature at the University of Wroc³aw in Poland and earned an MA in Russian Philology from the Moscow Pedagogical University in Moscow. She holds a PhD in Speech Communication from the University of Southern Illinois at Carbondale. Her 1998 article "Shame as Abject Communication: A Semiotic View" appeared in The American Journal of Semiotics and has been reprinted subsequently as well as translated into Portuguese. <back to translation>

Nedra Eileen Bickham divides her time between translating, teaching music and German, and exploring the unique coexistence of music and language. Nedra is presently working on a translation of Julia Franck’s short story collection, Bauchlandung: Geschichten zum Anfassen as well as a translation of the selected poems by the contemporary German poet Andreas Randow. Nedra resides in Boston with her husband and son. <back to translation>

Maria A. Burnett is a member of ALTA, ATA, Just Buffalo Literary Society and an Associate Member of Pen. She has a Master of Arts degree from SUNY Buffalo and a Laurea in Foreign Languages and Literatures from the prestigious University of Bologna, Italy. Her first published work is Tesio: In His Own Words, a translation from Italian to English, published in 2005 by the Russell, Meerdink Co. Federico Tesio, often referred to as “The Wizard of Dormello” is an icon of the Italian equestrian world, both a researcher and a writer. Maria continues to further her education by taking literature and writing courses at Just Buffalo Literary Society, SUNY Buffalo and online. <back to translation>

Andrzej Bursa (1932-1957) Before his life was cut short at age 25 by congenital heart failure, Bursa published 37 poems, a novel, and two plays. A native of Cracow [Kraków], he attended Jagiellonian University, after which he worked as a journalist. Bursa’s adolescence and early adult life span some of the darkest years of modern Polish history – from the Nazi invasion and brutal occupation during World War II to the Soviet occupation and Cold War. Bursa's work bitterly attacks social and political injustice, cant, pretense, and hypocrisy. Bursa’s language is often deliberately anti-poetic. He mixes obscure words, neologisms, regionalisms, slang, and occasional vulgarity. His grammar is often raw, elliptical, and clumsy, perhaps intended to reflect the caustic disillusionment of his generation. Below the surface of this poete maudit’s sneering cynicism, however, one finds serious moral questioning along with genuine compassion for the poor and disenfranchised. His poems lament the erosion of traditional values in the wake of World War II and the Soviet occupation. Bursa’s reputation increased rapidly after his death, his small oeuvre developing a cult following particularly among young people. <back to translation>

Kevin Christianson holds a PhD and MA in English from University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, and a BA in Comparative Literature from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. His poems and translations have appeared in The Minnesota Review, The Formalist, The Sarmatian Review, Metamorphosis, and others. A professor of English, he teaches courses in creative writing, poetry, and world literature at Tennessee Tech University. In 1999-2000 he received a Fulbright to teach American literature at Nicholas Copernicus University in Torun Poland. In 1998 he was elected member of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences. <back to translation>

James DenBoer is the author of Learning The Way and Trying to Come Apart (University of Pittsburgh Press), Nine Poems, Olson/DenBoer: A Letter, and Lost in Blue Canyon (Christopher's Books), Dreaming of the Chinese Army (Blue Thunder Press), A Bibliography of the Published Work of Douglas Blazek 1961-2001 (Glass Eye Books), Back Until Then (PalOMine Press), Black Dog: An Unfinished Segue Between Two Seasons (Rattlesnake Press, 2005) and has been included in anthologies edited by Dennis Schmitz, David Kherdian, X. J. Kennedy, and others. He has had grants and awards from the International Poetry Forum, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Council on the Arts, the Author's League of America, the Carnegie Fund for Authors, the Katherine Tremaine Sunshine Fund, PEN Center-New York, and The Portland Review, among others. <back to translation>

Maria den Boer is an accomplished scholarly editor and indexer, with a large collection of work from such university presses as Princeton and Johns Hopkins, and from commercial presses such as John Wiley, Perseus and ABC-CLIO. She has special competence in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. She is married to the poet David den Boer. <back to translation>

Julia Franck was born in former East Berlin in 1970. Her family left East Germany in 1978. Her fisrt novel, Der neue Koch, appeared in 1997 followed by Liebediener (1999), Bauchlandungen: Geschichten zum Anfassen (Bellyflops: Stories for the people - 2000), and Lagerfeuer (2003), all published by DuMont Verlag. She has since been awarded, among others, the Alfred Döblin Grant, the Lower Saxony Endowment Grant, the 3sat Prize at the Ingeborg Bachmann competition (2000), the Marie-Luise-Kaschnitz-Prize (2004) and the Villa Massimo Scholarship (2005). Julia Franck’s residence is in Berlin but in fulfillment of the Villa Massimo Fellowship, she is presently living in Rome with her two children. <back to translation>

Dr. Mary M. Y. Fung taught Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature and Translation in the Department of Chinese, University of Hong Kong, from 1966-1994. She is the author of The Poet as Thinker: A Study of Pien Chih-lin's Early Poems. Other publications include translations such as One Hundred Modern English Poems, and Amadeus by Peter Shaffer (with C.L. Chan), as welll as papers in journals. <back to translation>

Jorge Fernández Granados was born in Mexico City in 1965. His first book, Resurrección, won the Jaime Sabines prize in 1995. “Exorcism with an Apple” is from El cristal, a book of prose poems, while “Exile” and “Silhouettes of Her Face” are from Los hábitos de la ceniza won the Premio Nacional de Poesía Aguascalientes in 2000. He suffers from an auto-immune disorder which has left him nearly blind, but his conversation is wise and luminous. We last met in August 2004 in his favorite restaurant in the barrio of La Condesa. After awhile, Jorge excused himself; the route to the men’s room was circuitous. He came back to the table laughing gently. “That fellow over there,” he smiled, “got lost on the way to the baño. I offered to guide him. It was a little while before he realized that the blind was leading the blind! <back to translation>

David M. Jones is a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of Arkansas. He became greatly interested in Bulgarian literature and culture while living and working there with Peace Corps. His publications have appeared in Journal of Mundane Behavior and Nebo. <back to translation>

David Lunde directed the creative writing program at SUNY-Fredonia from 1967-2001. HIs poems and translations have been widely published in such journals as Poetry, TriQuarterly, The Literary Review, Chelsea, The Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, Northwest Review, Chicago Review, and in many anthologies. Hiw most recent book is Nightfishing in Great Sky River. <back to translation>

Miguel Correa Mujica was born in Placetas, Cuba, in 1957. He arrived in United States in 1980, during the Mariel boatlift. He studied Russian Language and Literature at Havana University. In 1984, the first Spanish edition of Al norte del infierno was published; his second novel, Furia del discurso humano, is forthcoming from Pureplay Press. He was awarded the Cintas Fellowship for Literature in 1984. He was a regular contributor to the quarterly Mariel. In 2002, he received a Doctorate in Hispano-American Language and Literatures from the City University of New York, where he currently serves as an Assistant Professor. Correa Mujica writes fiction and literary criticism for several international publications. <back to essay>

Alexis Romay is a contributor to Encuentro en la red and Letralia, Tierra de Letras, as well as to the quarterlies Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana and Artima(ñ)a. He has translated into Spanish the novel Flight to Freedom, by Ana Veciana-Suarez. In 2004, he received a Master of Arts in Spanish Language and Literature from the City University of New York. His novel Salidas de emergencia was selected a Finalist at the 2005 Plaza Mayor Literary Contest. His book of poetry Ciudad de invertebrados will be published in a bilingual edition by Pureplay Press. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, his dog and a few books. <back to essay>

Marco Saya was born in Buenos Aires on April 3, 1953. He moved to Rio de Janeiro where he lived for 7 years and presently resides in Milan, Italy. He is a writer and a guitar player. He composes songs, as well as poems. His first book, Bambole di Cera,was published by Laura Vichi, which earned him second place at the national poetry contest “La Cittadella.” Since then, he has been published several times in print and online. He is a monthly contributor to the Literary Journal “Il Filo” and his work has appeared in various anthologies. Saya believes that every moment we live deserves to be told. Our life is a puzzle of feelings, actions and emotions that prevent us from having that equilibrium we are so much looking for. His poetry is a constant journey of the soul, in search of a moment in time, a search which is for the most part fruitless. We have brief moments when truth is revealed, but we are soon reabsorbed in the rhythm of existence with no real equilibrium and time barely filling the void. <back to translation>

John Oliver Simon's most recent book of poems is Caminante (Creative Arts, 2002). He has published over 350 translations of contemporary Latin American poets and was awarded an NEA Literature Fellowship in Translation in 2001 for his work with the great Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas. From the Lightning, a generous Rojas collection, is due out from Green Integer. Some of his previous translations of Jorge Fernández Granados were published in Reversible Monuments (Copper Canyon). One of his poems is set in bronze in the sidewalk in the Addison Street Poetry Walk in Berkeley, California. He is Artistic Director of Poetry Inside Out, a multilingual writers-in-schools program sponsored by the Center for the Art of Translation. <back to translation>

Yordan Yovkov (1880-1937) is one of Bulgaria’s greatest writers, a reputation he established solely on the basis of his short stories. Growing up in the village of Zheravna, his mind feasted on the folk traditions that surrounded him and the stories his mother would tell. The themes and style of Yovkov’s work draw from the tales and life of rural Bulgaria, which he depicted with profound compassion and love. Yovkov had a vast influence on Bulgarian arts. He resented writers that suggested Bulgaria should imitate culturally and artistically other European countries and instead wrote to celebrate his county’s individual soul. <back to translation>

Bian Zhilin [Pien Chih-lin in Wade-Giles] (1910-2000) has been recognized as one of the most original voices in twentieth century Chinese poetry. In China he was also well known for his translations of western literature into Chinese, in particular his brilliant renderings of the French Symbolist poets Verlaine and Baudelaire by whom he was strongly influenced. A book-length collection of his poems is currently being translated by Fung and Lunde. <back to translation>

Programs in Creative Writing and Translation     ■     Department of English     ■     University of Arkansas      ■     Fayetteville