(b. 1972, Ashkelon) is a founding member of Ev, a literary group that seeks to introduce into Hebrew literature a new poetical language merging ancient and modern Hebrew. He received the Israeli Ministry of Education's Award in 1996 for his first collection of poems, The Monologue of Icarus (Gvanim, 1997). His second collection, That Which I Thought Shadow is the Real Body , was published in 2002 by Keter, the publishing house in which he now works as editor. His work has been translated into English, Dutch, and Italian. He has done translations of John Cage, Mallarmé, De Chirico and Blanchot, as well as contributing weekly to a leading Israeli paper on subjects such as cinema, literature, and music. In 1994 he joined the rock group Ha'atzula ("Aristocracy") as a songwriter and acoustic guitar player. They released their first album, Need , in 1996 and he has since collaborated with some of Israel's most prominent rock artists. He is participating courtesy of the US-Israel Educational Foundation.
(b. 1966, Warsaw) received her M.A. from Warsaw University (1989, with distinction) and her PhD from The Polish Academy of Sciences in 1995, which gave her a special award for her thesis, "The Crisis of the Subject in Contemporary Philosophy." She has presented papers in journals and at conferences prolifically over the past decade, as well as publishing the books, On the Other Side of Nihilism: Contemporary Philosophy in Search for a New Subjectivity (1997, IFIS PAN Press), Other Modernity: A Hidden Life of the Modern Soul (2000, Universitas) and her translation of Harold Bloom's seminal The Anxiety of Influence into Polish. Her recent work on the Romantic conception of subjectivity, The Spirit of the Surface. Romantic Prolegomena to Any Future Philosophy of Subjectivity (forthcoming in Polish, Universitas) aims, via its translation into English, "to show the Anglo-Saxon reader the unity, as well as actuality, of the Romantic movement perceived from both, British-American and Central European perspective." Dr. Bielik writes, "although I was originally trained as a philosopher, I often find more inspiration in the field of literature than in strictly academic philosophical writings. I am a strong advocate of the 'literary style' in philosophy, as well as of bringing together these two crucial domains of contemporary humanities." She is participating courtesy of Jurzykowski Foundation.
(b. 1962, Aalesund) was trained as a librarian but since her debut in 1991 with the book of poems, Bilde Av Menn (Pictures of Men), she has published eleven books in a wide range of genres, including novels, translations and children's books. She has translated, from English to Norwegian, a selection of Rita Dove's poetry entitled Det Rosa Er I Oss (The Pink Is in Us, 1996), Edith Wharton's famous novella Ethan Frome (2002) as well as selections of Adrienne Rich and H.D. In 1998, her novel Tvillingfeber (Twin Fever) won the Natt og Dag Award for Best Oslo Novel. Her latest novel, Landfastlykke (Mainland Happiness) won The Melsom Prize and the Sigmund Skard Scholarship. She has worked as a newspaper editor, a translator, and consultant for her publisher Samlaget and was a member of the Literary Council of the Norwegian Author's Union from 1996-2000. Most recently, she has been working with the interplay between poetry and dance. She is participating courtesy of the U.S. Department of State.
(b. 1963, La Plata) is among Argentina's most prominent writers. His first novel, Tejiendo Agua (Knitting in Water, 1985) won the Fortbat Prize. Inglaterra. Una fábula (England. A fable, 1999), a novel about an English company of Shakespearean actors who travel to Patagonia to play in front of the same Fuegian tribes who inspired the character of Caliban, won the most important Argentinean prize, the Premio Clarin de Novela. He has also published a collection of short stories (Los que llegamos más legos, 2002), a collection of poems (Fado, 1995), a collection of interviews (Historia de un deseo, 2000), the first Argentinean anthology of fiction on homosexuality, and three books about creative writing. Writers he has translated include Flannery O'Connor, Henry James, and Guy de Maupassant. Currently, he teaches creative writing, contributes to the two most important Argentinean newspapers (Clarin and La Nación), and is writing a novel which takes place in Lisbon during WW II. His works have been published in Portugal, Spain, Germany, Brazil, and France. He is participating courtesy of the U.S. State Department.
(b. 1954, Buzau) (family name Prelipceanu) has coordinated a series of world literature, "Biblioteca Polirom," at Polirom Publishing House since 2001, but has been an editor for more than twenty years. After her debut in the literary journal Romania literara in 1975, Izgonirea din Paradise (Banishment from Paradise, 1979), her first book of poetry, won the Debut Prize of the Writers' Union. Since then she has published four more volumes of poetry which enjoy a wide readership both in Romania and abroad and have garnered numerous accolades. A distinguished translator, she has published selections of Alan Brownjohn's and Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin's poetry and edited the bilingual Romanian/Polish anthology, Strong-28 Women Poets of Romania (1999). She is currently working on an anthology of Romanian women's poetry composed between 1960-2003. Ms. Comanescu was a founding member of the Civic Alliance (an association of Romanian intellectuals set up in 1990 whose ongoing purpose has been to strengthen the civil society) and has been the Secretary of the Romanian PEN Center for thirteen years. She is participating courtesy of the U.S. State Department.
(b. 1970, Santiago) is an active figure in the Chilean literary scene, having facilitated much-acclaimed creative writing workshops at the University of Chile and Catholic University of Chile as well as many other private cultural centers. She has published three novels and one book of short stories, Malas noches (Bad Nights, 2000). Her first novel, En voz baja (A Low Voice, 1996), won the Gabriela Mistral Literary Games Award. Her second novel was Ciudadano en Retiro ( Citizen in Retirement ,1998), and her third novel, Cansado ya del sol (Already Tired of the Sun, 2002), was a finalist in the Planeta Argentina Award in 2000. Many of her short stories have been adapted for theater production and published in anthologies, including Se Habla Español. Ms. Costamagna currently writes book reviews for Santiago Culture Magazine , contributes to the literature section of the Chilean Rolling Stone, and maintains a column in the Journalist. She is participating courtesy of the U.S. State Department.
(b. 1943, Tarvagant of Tuvshruulekh sum, Arkhangai aimag) is President of the Mongolian Knowledge University and of the Academy of Humanities. Educated in Moscow, Mr. Dashnyam studied economics and philosophy. He was one of the ideological leaders of the pro-democracy movement which brought about a peaceful revolution in Mongolia in 1990, worked as Vice-Speaker of Ardyn Ikh Khural (Parliament) in 1990-1992, and in 2001 ran for the presidency as the Civil Will Party candidate. He has published more than 30 books of poetry, fiction, and scholarship, most recently Hero Esukhei (2003, about Genghis Khan's father). His poems and stories have been included in a collection of the best contemporary Mongolian Literature. His work has been translated into Russian, English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Bulgarian, and Kazakh. He is participating courtesy of the William B. Quarton International Writing Program Scholarship.
(b. 1969, Hamburg) has taught at many German Universities as well as at Bard College in New York. A recipient of numerous fellowships, he has spent time in several European cities as well as New York and Chicago. His first book of poems, [Loops], was published in 2001 in German. He has contributed prose and poetry to many magazines, anthologies, and the major German newspapers, e.g. Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Welt. With Chong Heyong, he co-translated Kim Kwang Kyu's [The Depth of the Shell]; and frequently translates from the English for the journal Sprache im technischen Zeitalter, where he is also a contributing editor. He is participating courtesy of Max Kade German Writer in Residence Program.
(b. 1966, Marijampole) won the Z. Gele Prize for best first book of poems with Tatuiruote (Tattoo, 1993). Another collection of his, Kauline dudele (Bone Pipe, 1999), won both the Spring of Poetry and Simonaityte Awards. His works have been translated into English, German, Polish among other languages. In addition to writing poetry, Mr. Grajauskas works as a journalist and editor of Klaipeda, a daily newspaper very popular in Klaipeda city and the western part of Lithuania. He is responsible for the selection of literary works and promotion of young Lithuanian writers featured in Klaipeda's monthly literary supplement "Gintaro Lasai" (Drops of Amber). Since 2000, he has organized the annual poetry festival Placdarmas (Bridgehead) in Klaipeda. Having studied jazz at the State Conservatoire in Klaipeda, he also sings and plays the bass guitar in the band Rokfeleriai. He is participating courtesy of the U.S. Department of State.
(b. 1975, Hanoi) won the First Prize at the New Pens Poetry contest in 1996 and was elected Poet of the Year by the readers of Nguoi Lao Dong (Worker) Newspaper in 1999. Her poems have been widely anthologized, translated into French and English, and published in various magazines and newspapers in Vietnam. Her first book of poetry, White Grass, came out in 1999; her second and most recent book, The Night Is Flowing towards the Sky, will appear soon this year. Besides writing poetry, she has also done a translation of Jack London's The Call of the Wild (1995). Ms. Hoang Ly paints and works in installation & performance art as well. She has been teaching young children how to paint since 1997 and has held exhibits of her work and participated in a number of art festivals in Asia as well as the U.S. She will be participating courtesy of the U.S. Department of State.
(b. 1958, Choongju) is editor of the two most influential literary magazines in Korea: Spirit & Expression and People Loving Poetry. The first magazine deals with multiple genres of literature while the latter is dedicated solely to poetry. He also manages PoemCafe (www.poemcafe.com), a global network of poets which began in 2000 and now has more than 90 members worldwide. Mr. Jeong majored in modern Korean poetry, and received his Ph.D. at Kyeonghee University in Seoul. He has published three books of poems: The Appointment with a Stranger (1990), Sad Santa Fe (1994), and Nana Stories (1999). He also has a collection of essays titled Two Reports about Hell (1995). His next collection of poems will be out in late 2003. He is participating courtesy of the Korean Culture and Art Foundation.
(b. 1959, Changhung) is an associate professor of English Literature at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, Korea. He has received his Ph. D. in English from University of Iowa (1993) and written widely about contemporary American poets, especially ecopoets such as Gary Snyder, Wendell Berry, and A.R. Ammons. He is vice-president of ASLE_Korea (Association for the Study of Literature and Environment) and editor of Literature and Environment. He was awarded several times Korean Literature Translation Institute Grant and Daesan Foundation Award, and has translated more than six books of Korean poetry, including Heart's Agony (White Pine Press, 1998), Flowers in the Toilet Bowl (Homa & Sekey, Fall, 2003), and Trees of the World (Kegan Paul International, forthcoming). Presently he is translating with Christopher Merrill the works of Jiwoo Hwang (2000 IWP participant) and an anthology of contemporary Korean poetry. He is participating courtesy of the Freeman Foundation.
(b. 1968, Seoul) published his debut novel Nanen nareul pagiohal gweolliga itda [I Have a Right to Destroy Myself] in 1996. The novel was translated into the French as La Mort a Demi-mots (Editions Philippe Picquier, 1998). A prolific writer, he has written more than seven books as well as a significant number of essays and film reviews. In 1999, he won the 44th Contemporary Literature Prize for the novel Dangsine Namu [Your Tree, 1999]. He is also the host of a daily radio show on books and authors. He is participating courtesy of The Korea Literary Translation Institute.
(b.1939, Kansint) (U Win Pe) won the National Literary Prize in 1964 for his collection of poetry, Poems of Red and Blue (1964). A well-known scholar and writer, his poems, short stories, book reviews, and articles on Mayanma (Burmese) literature and art have appeared in various journals, magazines, and newspapers since 1958, often under the pen name Maung Swan Yi. He has lectured on literature, at schools, town halls, churches, and monasteries, since 1962 and has also devoted himself to the preserving of Burmese culture, conducting extensive field research on Burmese folklore and folk music. He is participating through private sponsorship.
(b. 1951, Tokyo) moved to the US when she was twelve, studied French literature at Yale but later returned to Japan to dedicate herself to fiction writing. She is now a prominent member of Japan's literary establishment. All her novels pay homage to Japanese literary tradition while breaking new ground. Zoku Meian (Light and Darkness Continued, 1990) finished the unfinished final novel of Natsume Soseki, a figure revered as the greatest modern novelist in Japan . Shishosetsu from Left to Right (An I-Novel from Left to Right, 1995) made use of a bilingual text and horizontal print to question the notion of a Japanese national literature. Her most recent novel, Honkaku Shosetsu (An Orthodox Novel, 2002), is a retelling of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights in postwar Japan , featuring Heathcliff born to a Japanese woman raped by a Chinese bandit. Her novels have received critical acclaim and awards including the distinguished Yomiuri Literature Award. She has taught at Princeton, the University of Michigan and Stanford. She is participating courtesy of the Freeman Foundation.
(b. 1959, Kiev) is a well-known Ukrainian poet and fiction writer who has published, under the pen name Yevgeniya Kononenko, a book of poetry, two novels, and a number of short stories. She has received several prestigious literary awards, including first prize at the Granoslov Awards for her book of poetry, First Snow Waltz (1997) and the Suchasnist award for her novel Imitation (2001). She is now working on a new novel and a collection of short stories. She is participating courtesy of the U.S. State Department.
(b. 1976, Ascot) is the author of The Ship of Fools (2002, Sceptre), which he also helped translate into French. He holds a BA from Oxford University in English Language and Literature as well as a classical acting degree from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. His awards include a Writer's Award from the Arts Council of England in 2003, and a BBC "Making Waves" award at the Brighton Festival in 2000. He has acted on television and written plays for radio. His new novel, Arts and Wonders, will be published in 2004. He will be participating courtesy of the U.S. Department of State.
( poet, columnist; Botswana, b. 1957) attended secondary school in London and was a poet-in-residence at the Scottish Poetry Library. Upon returning to Botswana, he co-founded the Writers' Association of Botswana and is now a senior lecturer and director of the writers' workshop at the University of Botswana. Besides having his poetry published in various journals and newspapers, Mr. Seboni's satirical weekly newspaper column "In the Nitty Gritty" and his scripts for the radio soap opera on HIV/AIDS ("Makgabaneng") also enjoy widespread popularity. He is participating courtesy of the U.S. State Department.
( poet; Poland b. 1967, Gdansk) belongs to the generation of Polish poets that gathered around the counter-culture quarterly bruLion (Rough Draft) and which is sometimes referred to as "The New Barbarians" (or as the "O'Haraists," due to the influence of Frank O'Hara and other New York School poets). Mr. Sendecki has written four books of poetry, most recently, Opisy przyrody (Descriptions of Nature, 2002) and Szkoci Dol (Scottish Pit , 2002). He co-edited the anthology of poetry, Dlugie pozegnanie. Tribute to Raymond Chandler (The Long Good-bye. Tribute to Raymond Chandler, 1997). He has been translated into numerous languages and has published books of selected poems in German and Portuguese. In the U.S., he was included in the Chicago Review's New Polish Writing. He currently works for Przekroj, a weekly cultural and social magazine. Mr. Sendecki is participating courtesy of U.S. Department of State.
( poet; Bosnia and Herzegovina, b. 1970, Sarajevo) received a degree in history from Sarajevo University, as well a post-graduate degree in archaeology from the University in Zagreb, Croatia. He currently works as an archaeologist at Sarajevo's National Museum, specializing in the Bosnian Mediaeval period. His first book of poems, Orao (The Eagle , 1995) came out of his experience as a front-line defender of Sarajevo in the Bosnian army and was published under the auspices of a series entitled, "Sarajevo under the Siege," which presented various works that took shape during the siege from 1992 to 1995. His work has appeared in several anthologies of Bosnian Poetry, including Scar on the Stone (ed. Chris Agee, 1998). Mr. Sijarić is currently working on a novel and a screenplay. He is participating courtesy of a CEC/ArtsLink fellowship.
( poet and fiction writer; Hungary b. 1966, Budapest) belongs to the third generation of postwar Jewish Hungarian writers, who came of age after the period of silence about Jewishness that characterized the experience of their parents' generation. Szántó has a degree in political science and jurisprudence from Eötvös Loránd University and is editor in chief of the Jewish cultural monthly Szombat, founded in 1989. He published his first volume of stories, A tizedik ember (The tenth man), in 1995. A volume of two novellas, Mószer (The Informer ) appeared in 1997 and appeared in German as In Schuld verstrickt (1999). Szántó has also published poetry and essays and a novel: Keleti pályadvar, végállomas (Eastern station, last stop). His short stories and essays have been translated in Italian, English, and German. He is participating courtesy of the U.S. State Department.
( non-fiction writer; Ireland b. 1951, Bray) has written extensively for the Irish Times, where he was a staff journalist from 1988 to 2002, first as arts editor (for six years) and later as an editor and contributor on the foreign desk. He has worked for numerous other publications as well as in radio and television. His first full-length book, Dirty War, Clean Hands (Cork University Press, 2001; Yale University Press, 2003), is a study of the consequences, for contemporary Spanish democracy, of the use of state terrorist methods to combat the terrorism of the Basque separatist group ETA. It was a best-seller in Ireland and received glowing reviews internationally by publications ranging from Time magazine to the Times Literary Supplement. He is currently working freelance on three book projects: images of migratory birds in human culture; a comparison of the Basque and Northern Irish conflicts; and a novel based in the Basque Country. He is participating courtesy of the William B. Quarton International Writing Program Scholarship.
/ 严力 (painter, poet, fiction writer; China b. 1954, Beijing) was a member of a group of artists known as "The Stars," famous for their daring exhibition of works tinged with abstraction and surrealism; as a writer, he is identified with the Misty Poets, a group that gained notice in the late 70s for their subversion of social realism via personal emotions and private imagery. In 1987, he founded Yi-Hang (First Line) in New York, a quarterly journal that features the works of contemporary Chinese poets as well as translations of American poems. His work has been translated into French, Italian, English, Swedish, Korean and German. He has held many exhibitions and published numerous books, most recently a novel titled Meet with 9.11 (Literature & Art Press, Shanghai, 2002). He is participating courtesy of the Freeman Foundation.
(novelist; China b. 1960, Hangzhou) published his first book in 1984, Shibasui Chumen Yuanxing (Leaving Home at Eighteen) which was followed by several more novels and collections of short stories and essays, most notably, Huo Zhe (To Live), made into a film by renowned director Zhang Yimou, winning the Grand Jury Prize and Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival in 1994. Trained as a dentist, Yu Hua left the profession after five years to become a writer. His works have been translated into numerous languages; To Live (Random House, trans. Michael Berry) appeared in English in 2003, followed by Chronicle of a Blood Merchant (Pantheon, trans. Andrew F. Jones) also in 2003. Considered avant-garde and controversial, his fictions place him in the forefront of China's literary scene. He will be participating courtesy of The University of Iowa Chinese Community.
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