Contributor Bios
[Zoland Poetry No. 1]

Mina Assadi was born in northern Iran in 1943. After completing a degree in Media Studies in Tehran, she began working as a journalist and critic for various newspapers and literary journals. She is the author of numerous books of poetry, essays and short stories, most of which have only been published outside Iran. Her travels to Europe began before the Revolution, but due to censorship, she finally settled in Sweden in 1980. She is still forbidden from entering Iran.

Ilya Bernstein’s collection of poetry is called Attention and Man (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2003). His poetry, prose, and translations have appeared in Ars Interpres, TheBest American Poetry 2005 (forthcoming), Circumference, Fulcrum, 6x6, Persephone, Moon City Review, and Res. He is the editor of Osip Mandelstam: New Translations (UDP, 2006). He translates for a living and lives in New York City.

David Blair was born in 1970 and grew up in Pittsburgh. He teaches at the New England Institute of Art in Brookline, MA. He has an undergraduate degree in philosophy from Fordham University and an MFA in creative writing from The University of North Carolina, Greensboro. He lives in Medford with his wife Sabrina.

Elena Borta is a free-lance literary researcher and translator who has contributed translations from English and Scandinavian languages to various literary and cultural periodicals. She is currently working on a book-length manuscript on fantasy in Mircea Eliade. Borta has been the recipient of a travel grant from the Soros Foundation. Her translations of Ioan Flora with Adam Sorkin have appeared in Chase Park, Visions International, Natural Bridge, Facets, eXchanges, Ellipsis, Philadelphia Poets, Saranac Review and River City.

Jack Collom teaches ecology-poetics and oversees Project Outreach at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, where he has been resident faculty for over a decade. His books include Arguing With Something Plato Said, The Task, and Entering the City. He has worked extensively with the Teachers and Writers Collaborative in New York City. He has twice been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Red Car Goes By (a selected poems 1955-2000) was published by Tuumba Press. Collom lives in Boulder CO.

Phil Cordelli is currently, though tenuously, residing in New York City, New York. He is a member of the Ugly Duckling Presse collective in Red Hook, Brooklyn, where large cruise ships can sometimes be seen. He is also a member of The Pines, which has no real location but www.thepines.blogspot.com. Works of his can be seen in magazines such as CutBank, Pool, and Cannibal; and in books such as The Pines Volume Three: The Knights of Columbus.

Sam Cornish lives in Boston, and is the author of 1935: A Memoir (Ploughshares Books) and two books of poems through Zoland Books, Cross A Parted Sea and Folks Like Me. He is the former Literature Director for the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities. His book reviews have appeared frequently in The Christian Science Monitor and other periodicals.

Joel Craig lives in Chicago, Illinois, working as a graphic designer and deejay. His poems have been published in Iowa Review, Fence, Spoon River, Bridge and MoonLit, among others. He co-founded and curates The Danny’s Reading Series.

Julian Meldon D’Arcy is Professor of English at the University of Iceland. He has written several articles and two books on Scottish literature: Scottish Skalds and Sagamen (1996) and Subversive Scott (2005). He is currently writing a book on sport literature. He has also translated into English some Icelandic children's books and plays, a book on Icelandic birds, and a collection of stories by one of Iceland's foremost twentieth-century authors, Svava Jakobsdóttir: The Lodger and Other Stories.

Lidija Dimkovska was born in 1971 in Skopje, Macedonia. Her prizewinning debut collection Progenies of the East was published in 1992, and she has since written three more books of poetry (Fire of Letters, Bitten Nails, and Nobel vs. Nobel) and has edited an anthology of young Macedonian poets. In 2004 she published her prizewinning novel Hidden Camera. In 2006 Ugly Duckling Presse published a selection of her poetry Do Not Awaken Them With Hammers. She lives and works in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Valerie Duff earned her masters degree in creative writing from Boston University and Trinity College, Dublin. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Harvard Review, Agni, Denver Quarterly and elsewhere, and her book reviews have appeared in Salamander, Bostonia, and PN Review (UK). She is a regular poetry editor for Salamander, and she has received St Botolph and Massachusetts Cultural Council grants for her poetry. Her short play, The Means Which Enable Me to Work, was performed in an Arlington New Plays Festival in 2004. She is a freelance writer and editor and stay-at-home mom living in the Boston area.

Thomas Sayers Ellis co-founded The Dark Room Collective (in Cambridge, Massachusetts); and received his M.F.A. from Brown University in 1995. He is the recipient of a Mrs. Giles Whiting Writers' Award and fellowships from The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, The Fine Arts Work Center, Yaddo and The MacDowell Colony. His poems have appeared in Callaloo, The Best American Poetry (1997 and 2001), Grand Street, Poetry, Tin House and numerous anthologies, including Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century. He is the author of The Maverick Room (2005), which won the John C. Zacharis First Book Award, The Good Junk (Take Three #1, 1996). The Genuine Negro Hero (2001) and, a chaplet, Song On (2005). Currently Mr. Ellis is an Assistant Professor of Writing at Sarah Lawrence College and a faculty member of The Lesley University low-residency M.F.A Program. His Quotes Community: Notes for Black Poets is forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press

Astradur Eysteinsson is professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Iceland (Reykjavik). His publications include co-translations of works by Franz Kafka and Max Frisch into Icelandic, several articles in the general area of literary, cultural, and translation studies, and three books: The Concept of Modernism (Cornell UP 1990), Tvimaeli (on translation and translation studies, University of Iceland Press 1996) and Umbrot (on literature and modernity, University of Iceland Press 1999). He is also the co-editor (with Daniel Weissbort) of Translation—Theory and Practice: A Historical Reader (OUP 2006).

Ioan Flora author of fifteen books of poetry, among them Lecture on the Ostrich-Camel (1995), The Swedish Rabbit (1998), Medea and Her War Machines (2000), died in February 2005 only days after the publication of his final book of poems, the title of which, ironically, was a black-humor play on Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe—in Romanian, Dejun sub iarba or Luncheon Under the Grass. Flora won prizes at the Struga Poetry Festival, from the Writers’ Union of the Republic of Moldova, and from both the Romanian Writers’ Union and Association of Professional Writers in Romania (aspro), among other awards.

Sarah Fox lives in Minneapolis with her husband John Colburn and her daughter Nora. She works as a community outreach facilitator for Parents in Community Action Head Start, as editor of Fuori Editions, as a teacher of poetry and creative writing in schools and literary centers through Minnesota, and as a doula. She’s won grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bush Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, and the Minnesota State Arts Board. Because Why, her first collection of poems, was published by Coffee House Press.

Benjamin Friedlander’s areas of expertise include Poetry and Poetics, Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century American Literature, and Critical Theory. He is the author of Simulcast: Four Experiments in Criticism (Univ. of Alabama Press, 2004) and coeditor of Charles Olson’s Collected Prose (UC Press, 1997).

Lyn Hejinian is a poet, essayist, and translator. She was born in the San Francisco Bay Area and lives in Berkeley. Published volumes of her writing include Writing is An Aid to Memory, My Life, Oxota: A Short Russian Novel, Leningrad (written in collaboration with Michael Davidson, Ron Silliman, and Barrett Watten), The Cold of Poetry, and Sight, written in collaboration with Leslie Scalapino. Some of her most recent books include A Border Comedy (Granary Books, 2001), Slowly and The Beginner (both published by Tuumba Press, 2002), My Life in the Nineties (Shark Books, 2003), and The Fatalist (Omnidawn, 2003).

Fanny Howe was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1940. She is the author of more than twenty books of poetry and prose. Her recent collections of poetry include On the Ground (Graywolf, 2004), Gone (2003), Selected Poems (2000), Forged (1999), Q (1998), One Crossed Out (1997), O’Clock (1995), and The End (1992). Howe was the recipient of the 2001 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for her Selected Poems. She has also won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Poetry Foundation, the California Council for the Arts, and the Village Voice, as well as fellowships from the Bunting Institute and the MacArthur Colony. She was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2001 and 2005.

Daniela Hurezanu has a Ph.D. in Romance languages and literatures and taught French for ten years at several universities in the United States. She has published translations in Metamorphoses, Manoa, Field, Exquisite Corpse, New Orleans Review, and Circumference, and her original work has appeared or is forthcoming in LittéRéalité, Pacific Review and Prairie Schooner.

Devin Johnston is the author of two books of poetry, Aversions (Omnidawn, 2004) and Telepathy (Paper Bark Press, 2001), as well as a number of chapbooks. The latter include a collaboration with the artist Brian Calvin entitled Looking Out (Lvng Supplementals, 2004). His book of criticism, Precipitations: Contemporary American Poetry as Occult Practice, appeared from Wesleyan University Press in 2002. With Michael O’Leary, he directs Flood Editions, an independent and nonprofit press for poetry.

Henia & Ilona Karmel wrote these poems as young women of twenty and fifteen in the forced labor camps of World War II. Henia and Ilona were born into an affluent and distinguished family in Krakow. They spoke Polish, Yiddish and German. They read Hebrew and Western classics as well as Adam Mickiewicz and the contemporary Polish-Jewish poet Julian Tuwim. In a section of Buchenwald set aside for women the sisters sewed the poems into the hems of their dresses. Fanny Howe met Ilona at MIT in the fall of 1978. The poems included here are rough, immediate, emotionally young and determined by early education in rhymed verse.

Esmail Kho’i was born in Mashad, Iran in 1938. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from London University and then left Iran for good in 1983. He is the author of more than twenty volumes of poetry reflecting a variety of styles, as well as several volumes of essays and translations. Edges of Poetry and Outlandia are selected volumes of his works in English translation. Voice of Exile, published in 2002 is his first work of poetry in English.

Tanya Larkin was born in Italy, grew up in Western Pennyslvania, and now lives in Somerville, MA. She was educated at Columbia University and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. In 2004 she was a recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant.She teaches English at the New England Institute of Art. Her most recent poems have appeared in The Hat and Boog City. At present, she is working on a novel.

Joan Lindgren translated and edited the work of Argentine poet Juan Gelman for the University of California Press volume Unthinkable Tenderness (1997). Having published her translations widely, she is now traveling with the installation art project from Buenos Aires POESIA DIARIA/EVERYDAY POETRY/LA POESIE DE TOUS LES JOURS, a community poetry translation effort (www.poesiadiaria.com).

Rachel Loden’s book Hotel Imperium (Georgia) was named one of the ten best poetry books of the year by The San Francisco Chronicle, which called it “quirky and beguiling.” Loden has also published The Last Campaign, which won the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center Chapbook Prize, and The Richard Nixon Snow Globe (Wild Honey Press). Her work has appeared recently in New American Writing, Jacket, Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry, Best American Poetry 2005 and elsewhere. Awards include a Pushcart Prize, a Fellowship in Poetry from the California Arts Council, and a 2006 grant from the Fund for Poetry.

Gian Lombardo is the author of three collections of prose poetry—Standing Room, Sky Open Again (Dolphin-Moon Press, 1989 & 1997) and Of All the Corners to Forget (Meeting Eyes Bindery, 2004). His translation of the first half of Aloysius Bertrand’s Gaspard de la nuit was published in 2000, and a translation of Eugène Savitzkaya’s Les règles de solitude in 2004. He directs Quale Press, which publishes both literary and technology-oriented works. He also teaches courses on book and magazine publishing at Emerson College where he is director of the Publishing Certificate Program.

Work by John Maloney has appeared in the Boston Book Review, The New York Times, North Atlantic Books Anthology, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, and Southern Poetry Review. His book Proposal was published by Zoland Books in 1999.

Poems and translations of Chris Michalski have been published or are forthcoming in such journals as Spoon River Poetry Review, Asheville Poetry Review, Poetry International, RHINO and FIRE. His second film, weg, is currently in post-production.

Ange Mlinko’s first book Matinées was published by Zoland Books in 1999, and was hailed at the time as a Publishers Weekly Book of the Year. Her second collection Starred Wire (Coffee House, 2005) was the National Poetry series award winner. She currently lives outside of New York City with her husband and two young sons.

Born in Argentina in 1942, Hugo Mujica left home at nineteen. As a plastic artist in New York during the sixties, he repaired to the same guru as Allen Ginsberg. After meeting Thomas Merton at Gethsemane, Mujica elected the monastic life and spent seven years in silence, discovering the source of his poetry. Now living in Buenos Aires, where he teaches philosophy, he travels Argentina on lecture tours, spending January and February teaching in Madrid. In February, 2006. Mujica became Argentina's second living poet—after Juan Gelman—to have his entire poetic work collected by Seix Barral. The first printing of his Poesia Completa sold out within two months.

Christopher Mulrooney has written poems and translations in The Aroostook Review, The Hollins Critic, Eclipse and Upstairs at Duroc, criticism in Parameter, Elimae and The Film Journal, and a volume of verse, notebook and sheaves (AmErica House, 2002).

Charles North has published seven collections of poetry, the most recent of which, The Nearness of the Way You Look Tonight (Adventures in Poetry), was a finalist for the inaugural Phi Beta Kappa Poetry Award. A new collection, Cadenza, was published by Hanging Loose in 2007. He has also published a book of essays on poets, artists and critics, No Other Way, and collaborations with the poet Tony Towle and the artist Trevor Winkfield. With James Schuyler he edited the poet/painter anthologies Broadway and Broadway 2. North is Poet-in-Residence at Pace University in NewYork City.

Raymond Queneau (1903-1976) was a novelist and poet best-known for his works Exercises in Style, Zazie dans le Metro, and One Hundred Billion Poems. He is also renowned for having co-founded, with François Le Lionnais, OuLiPo (Ouvroir de la Litterature Potentielle) in 1960, a forum which fostered experimentation based on various types of constraints, the most famous example of which being the total absence of the letter “e” in Georges Perec’s novel La Disparition.

Mani Rao (b. India 1965, r. Hong Kong 1993-) is the author of six poetry books including Echolocation (Chameleon Press, 2003, Hong Kong). Rao’s writing is in many anthologies and journals including Wasafiri, Meajin, WestCoastLine, Fulcrum and Iowa Review. In Hong Kong, Rao co-founded a poetry reading series and hosted a weekly poetry program on radio. She was the Writer-in-residence for University of Iowa International Programs, and visiting fellow at the UI International Writing Program 2005. Her multi-media work is on www.manirao.com

Barbara Jane Reyes was born in Manila, Philippines and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received her undergraduate education at UC Berkeley, and her MFA at San Francisco State University. She is the author of Gravities of Center (Arkipelago, 2003) and Poeta en San Francisco (Tinfish, 2005), for which she received the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Action Yes, Asian Pacific American Journal, Chain, Crate, How2, Interlope, New American Writing, Nocturnes Review, North American Review, Parthenon West Review, Shampoo Poetry, Tinfish, Versal, among others. She lives and works in Oakland, CA.

Amelia Rosselli—poet, journalist, musician, musicologist, and composer—was born in Paris in 1930. Her family was forced to move between France, England, and the United States after the 1936 assassination of her father by Fascist order; she eventually settled in Rome in 1950. She is the author of 8 volumes of poetry in Italian, including Bellicose Variations (Variazioni belliche, 1959–1961) and Hospital Series (Serie ospedaliera, 1963–1965), from which the poems in this annual were drawn, as well as of Sleep: Poems in English (1953–1966), and various polylingual works gathered in Primi scritti 1952–1963 (Early Writings, Guanda 1980). She died in 1996.

Jennifer Scappettone’s current book projects include From Dame Quickly (poems), Locomotrix: Selected Poetry of Amelia Rosselli (translations), Venice and the Digressive Invention of the Modern (a critical study of the obsolescent metropolis as a crucible for modernism), and Exit 43 (an archaeology of the landfill and opera of pop-ups in progress, commissioned by Atelos Press). She is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Chicago.

Born in Ankara in 1961, Zafer Senocak has been living in Germany since 1970, where he has become a leading voice in the German discussions on multiculturalism, national and cultural identity, and a mediator between Turkish and German culture. A widely published poet, essayist, journalist and editor, he has won several prestigious literary awards in Germany. His works have been translated into Turkish, English, French, Dutch, and Hebrew.

Patricia Smith is the author of four books of poetry: Teahouse of the Almighty, the 2005 National Poetry Series winner, Close to Death; Big Towns, Big Talk—both published by Zoland Books—and Life According to Motown. Her work has been widely anthologized and performed worldwide. Author of the critically acclaimed history Africans in America and the award-winning children’s book Janna and the Kings, Smith is currently working on Fixed on a Furious Star, a biography of Harriet Tubman. A Cave Canem faculty member and former McEver Chair in Writing at Georgia Tech University, Smith is also a four-time National Poetry Slam champion.

Adam J. Sorkin’s recent books of translation include Daniela Crsnaru’s short stories translated with the author, The Grand Prize and Other Stories (Northwestern UP), which came out in early 2005, and the 2004 book, Marin Sorescu’s, The Bridge, translated with Lidia Vianu (Bloodaxe Books)—the winner of the 2005 Corneliu M. Popescu Prize for European Poetry Translation of The Poetry Society, London. Sorkin’s version of Magda Cârneci, Chaosmos (done with the poet), is appearing from White Pine Press, and Mariana Marin, Paper Children (with various collaborators), from Ugly Duckling. He received a 2005-2006 NEA Poetry Fellowship.

Jonas Thorbjarnarson was born 1960 in Akureyri in northern Iceland, and grew up there. He studied classical guitar, physical therapy, philosophy, art history and French, but lives and works as a poet. He now divides his time mainly between Reykjavik, Iceland, and Italy. He has brought out seven books of poetry. A number of his poems have appeared in translation in several languages.

Jacqueline Waters is the author of a book, A Minute without Danger (Adventures in Poetry, 2001), and a chapbook, The Garden of Eden a College (A Rest Press, 2004). Her work has appeared in Chicago Review, The Poker, 6x6, and other magazines. She was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, and currently lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright’s translations of contemporary German poets has been featured in The Seneca Review, Delos, Agni, and Another Chicago Magazine among others. Winner of Agni’s William J. Arrowsmith Translation Award, she has received fellowships from the NEA, the American Literary Translators Association, and the University of Arkansas Fulbright College. Editor of German language poetry for New European Poets (forthcoming from Graywolf in 2006), a selection of her translations of enocak will appear in the PIP Anthology of World Literature of the 20th Century, forthcoming from Green Integer Books.