ABDOURAHMAN A. WABERI was born in Djibouti in 1965 and has lived in France since 1985. Two collections of short stories and his novel Balbala, a Djibouti trilogy, were published in Paris in 1996; short prose texts in Cahier nomade, 1994 and 1999, all by Le Serpent à Plumes. His poems Les nomades, mes freres, vont boire a la Grande Ourse appeared in 2000 and his "novelistic variations" the next year: Rift Routes Failes (Paris: Gallimard), as did a collection of short texts for Rwanda: Terminus. He won the Grand Prix litteraire de l'Afrique noire in 1996.

LAILA WADIA was born in Bombay, and has lived in Trieste for 20 years. She works at the University of Trieste as an English language expert. "Curry di pollo" won the Eks&Tra short story prize and was published in La seconda pella (Edizioni Eks&Tra, 2004). Two of Wadia's short stories, including "Curry di pollo," appeared in an anthology, Pecore nere, in 2005 (Laterza). In addition, she has published a short story collection entitled Il burattinaio e altre storie extra-italiane (Cosmo Iannone, 2004).

MARIE WAECHTER Active in the arts in Northampton, she is exploring the challenge of translation.

MAY GWIN WAGGONER, Laborde-Neuner Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Louisiana Lafayette, specializes in Louisiana Francophone language and literature and Louisiana Acadian music. Recent publications include Une fantaisie collective: anthologie du drame louisianais cadien (University of Louisiana Lafayette: Center for Louisiana Studies, 1999). Her critical edition of Camille Thierry's Les Vagabondes will appear this fall. She is a published poet in French and American journals and has won numerous awards for her poetry and short stories. La mer attendra (poems) was published in Grenoble in 1990.

BARRY WALLENSTEIN is the author of four collections of poetry, the most recent being Short Life of the Five Minute Dancer (Ridgeway Press, 1993). He is a professor of literature and creative writing at City College (New York) and an editor of American Book Review. A special interest is the performance of jazz and poetry together. He has made three recordings of his poetry with jazz collaboration, most recently In Case You Missed It, on SkyBlue Records (CD 106, 1995). He is the Director of City College's Poetry Outreach Center. In 1995 he won a fellowship to the Macdowell Colony. He lives in New York City.

MYRIAM WARNER-VIEYRA. Born in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe (1939), she has lived in Senegal for more than thirty years. Her first novel was Le quimboiseur l'avait dit... (As the Sorceror Said), 1980; her second, Juletane (1982), is still in print in English translation. Both describe tragedies awaiting young women who leave Guadeloupe in search of intellectual or emotional fulfillment. Juletane's portrayal of polygamy problematizes Negritude's "return to Africa." Femmes echouées (1988), in which the story in this issue appears, was never previously translated into English.

KELLY WASHBOURNE Translator and poet, currently teaching at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst). His work has appeared in Voices International, Magic Realism, Fistion, Xenophilia and Midnight Zoo.

M. LYNN WEISS is Associate Professor of English and American Studies at the College of William and Mary. She edited and presented two plays by francophone Louisiana Creole of color, Victor Séjour, The Jew of Seville and The Fortune Teller. She is the author of the study, Gertrude Stein, Richard Wright: The Poetics And Politics Of Modernism.

ERIK WEISSENGRUBER completed his Ph.D. in Theatre History, Theory, and Criticism at the University of Minnesota’s Department of Theatre Arts and Dance. His dissertation was entitled Utopia and Politics in the Theatre of Howard Barker. He teaches in the Department of English Language, Literature, and Creative Writing at the University of Windsor, Canada. He is currently preparing a study on the effect of censorship by the Lord Chamberlain on modern British drama and theatre.

KEVIN WETMORE teaches theatre at Denison University. His book on African intercultural theatre, African Adaptations of Greek Tragedy, is forthcoming from McFarland & Company.

SARAH WHITE Teaches in the Department of French and Italian at Franklin and Marshall College. Her poetry, essays and fiction have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The Exquisite Corpse, Rethinking Marxism, Alea and other magazines. She translated Paul Zumthor's Speaking of the Middle Ages and is collaborating with Matilda Bruckner and Laure Shepard on Songs of the Women Troubadours, a bilingual edition forthcoming from Garland Press.

RICHARD WILBUR (born in New York City, 1921) former Poet Laureate of the United States, his books of poetry include New and Collected Poems (1988), which won the Pulitzer Prize, and Things of This World (1956), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. His honors also include the Bollingen Prize, two PEN Translation Awards, and the Prix de Rome Fellowship. He lives in Cummington, Massachusetts.

ALEXANDER WORONZOFF-DASHKOFF is Professor of Russian at Smith College. For many years he also worked in the Russian Summer School at Middlebury College, the last nine years as Director of the School. His scholarship has been devoted to the life and works of E. R. Dashkova, and recently he participated in the preparation and publication of the French edition of her Mon histoire. He has also published on Mikhail Lermontov, Leo Tolstoy, and Andrei Bely, among others.

CATHERINE WORONZOFF-DASHKOFF is Senior Lecturer in Russian at Smith College. She has also taught at the Russian Summer School at Middlebury College. Recently, she participated in the preparation and publication of the French edition of E. R. Dashkova’s Mon histoire. She is also a contributing editor for Metamorphoses.

PETER WORTSMAN's translations include a critically-acclaimed edition of Posthumous Papers of a Living Author, by Robert Musil; the 19th century German Romantic classic, Chamisso’s Peter Schlemiel; an historic treatise in defense of freedom of expression, Recommendation Whether to Confiscate, Destroy and Burn All Jewish Books, by the 16th century German humanist Johannes Reuchlin (Paulist Press, 2000). Recipient of the 1985 Beard's Fund Short Story Award, he has also published a book of short fiction, A Modern Way To Die and a stage play, "The Tattooed Man Tells All."

 SERGEY YESENIN (1895-1925) Russian lyric poet of the early Soviet period, whose suicide in 1925 had a large impact on other Russian poets and intellectuals at home and abroad.

LAUREN YODER is the Chair of the French department at Davidson College, where he teaches African and Caribbean literature. He lived in Africa for five years. His translations of a book of tales by Kama Kamada (Tales Vol. 1) and a collection of Kamada's poems (Wind-Whispering Soul) appeared in 2001. He is currently translating a second volume of tales (La Nuit des griots) in which the story in this issue of Metamorphoses will appear.

SONG YONG was born in Youngkwang, Korea in 1940. He studied German language and literature at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies and started his writing career with a short story, “Cock-Fighting,” published in Changbi magazine in 1967. Since then, he’s published several books of fiction and non-fiction including Teacher and the Crown Prince (1974). His most recent collection of short stories, For Baloza, was published in April, 2003 by Changbi.

SAÚL YURKIEVICH was born on November 27, 1931 in La Plata, Argentina, where he was educated and began his literary and academic career. His first books of poetry and literary criticism were published there. In the mid-1960s he moved to Paris where he was appointed professor of Latin American literature at the Université de Paris VIII, a post he still occupies. He has taught and lectured extensively at universities in Europe, Latin America, and in the United States at such institutions as the universities of Maryland, Pittsburgh, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Chicago, and most recently at UCLA. He was a close friend of Julio Cortázar, who named him in his will as executor of his papers. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for the academic year of 1987-88 to work on the papers, a task that continues today. Throughout his career he has successfully combined writing both critical work as well as poetry and creative prose. He has published 15 volumes of poetry, the first in 1961 and the most recent, El sentimiento del sentido, (Ediciones ERA, México) in 2000. He has also published 14 volumes of criticism; two of the best known are Fundadores de la nueva poesía latinoamericana, 1971, enlarged and reissued in 1984 (Barcelona), and Summa crítica, 1998 (México). In addition to translations into English by Cola Franzen, three bilingual Spanish-French selections of poetry have appeared, and poems have been translated and published in German and Italian anthologies.

ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI (1945- ) is a poet and essayist. With Baranczak and Krynicki, he is one of the best-known members of the "Generation of '68." He divides his time between Paris, Krakow and Houston, where he teaches creative writing. This poem is taken from his early collection Sklepy miesne (Butcher Shops, 1975).

RUMANIA ZAKHARIEVA has lived in Germany since 1970 and has studied Slavic and English philology at the University of Bonn in Germany. She writes poetry in both Bulgarian and German and has published a large number of books, both poetry and prose. She has also done journalistic work for varioius German and Austrian radio stations. Zakharieva is an example of an artist who lives abroad and yet remains actively involved in Bulgarian literature and culture.

 KARIM ZAIMOVIC was born in 1971 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He studied Fine Arts and Comparative Literature at the University of Sarajevo. His interest in journalism and creative writing manifested itself early. When he was only fourteen years old, he started working for Radio Sarajevo and the local paper Our Days. During the war in Bosnia, he worked on two novels and presented his creative writing on the independent radio station "Wall." in August 1995, three months before the final cease-fire, Karim was fatally wounded during a Serbian shelling of Sarajevo. He left behind two unfinished novels, numerous essays, short stories, newspaper articles, and artwork. His first collection of short stories and essays, The Secret of Raspberry Jam, was published posthumously and awarded a literary prize by the Soros Foundation.

ELIGIO ZANINI (Rovigno d'Istria, 1927-1993) was born in Rovigno (Istria) and trained to be a teacher at the Istituto Magistrale di Pola. As a very young man, he fought as a partisan against the Fascists; in January 199 he was one of the first to suffer repression under Tito and was imprisoned in the communist lager, Goli Otok (Isola Calva). When he was freed in 1952, he found work as an accountant. He was not allowed to return to teaching until 1959. For five years he taught in Salvore, then returned to Rovigno where he worked as an accountant to make ends meet and earned a University degree in Education at Pola before teaching in a school in Valle d'Istria and finally returning to Rovigno where he retired to write poetry in the Istriot dialect of Rovigno and to fish.

NEVENA ZHELYAZKOVA is a native of Bulgaria, where she was educated until coming to the United States to study at Smith College; she earned a B.A. in 2005. She intends to continue her studies in Europe.

SETH ZIMMERMAN is a professor of mathematics whose current areas of research are combinatorial geometry, probability densities, and anthropological simulations. His illustrated, rhymed translation of Dante’s Inferno is available on the web at http://home.earthlink.net/~zimls/