RON D.K. BANERJEE Contributing Editor of Metamorphoses, born in India. Poet, translator and critic, he has served in variouss of the Five College faculties. His translations from the Bengali, Poetry from Bengal, were published by UNESCO. Far From You, from the Czech, appeared in 1980. His latest publication is L'Antica Fiamma.

RUY BELO (1933-1978) one of the most important Portugese poets of the 20th century, he was a doctor of canonical law and, though freed from orthodoxy, remained deeply religious in his quest to understand the purpose of human existence in a mutable world.

H.N. BIALIK (1873-1934) the greatest Hebrew poet of modern times, Bialik wrote essays and stories as well as working with translating and editing. He helped free Hebrew poetry from Biblical dominance while still retaining a connection to its roots. He often wrote about the crisis of faith which touched his generation as they sought to retain their medieval Jewish roots in a modern secularized world.

MANUEL MARIA BARBOSA DU BOCAGE (1765-1805) a leading 18th century poet who travelled the world of Portugal's empire and drew parallels between himself and his predecessor, Camões. He was a typical romantic in his hatred of despotism, his love of personal freedom, his attachment to darkness and night, and his obsession with impending death.

LUÍS DE CAMÕES (1524-1580) considered the greatest poet of the Portugese language. His best-known work is the epic in ten books, The Lusiads. Blinded in one eye in a battle in Morocco, he continued as a soldier for sixteen years in the Eastern reaches of Portugese exploration and conquest. Upon returning to Portugal, he barely survived on a small pension granted him after the publication of his great epic.

HÉLÈNE CANTARELLA Writer, critic, translator, teacher of languages Emerita at Smith College. For many years wrote reviews for The New York Times, The New Leader and other periodicals. Former Chief of the Foreign Language Section of the Motion Picture Bureau of the Office of War Information, then Coordinator of Films at Smith College. Lives in Leeds, Massachusetts.

MATTHEW DAUBE Co-editor of Metamorphoses and a graduate student in Playwriting at Smith College. He has lived in Germany and Scotland but has spent most of his life in various parts of Massachusetts.

RITA DINALE Poet, writer, Professor Emerita in Italian Literature at Smith College. Recipient of the Lerici-Pea Poetry Prize in 1987. Three collections of her poems have appeared in Italy as well as a prose memoir of her adolescence and work in such journals as Paragone-Letteratra, Alfabeta, Erba d'Arno and in the September 1993 issue of Metamorphoses.

NATALIA GINZBURG (1916-1991) Italian anti-Fascist novelist, known especially for her witty, somewhat clinical depiction of the domestic scene. Her children carried on the family tradition and are well known in their own right.

HELGA HENSCHEN Born in Sweden in 1917, is an artist and illustrator and has been active in peace and environmental work.

JAYADEVA (late 12th century, Bengal), author of the celebrated Sanskrit poem Gitagovinda ("Song of the Cowherd"), which helped to popularize devotional Hinduism. He has for several centuries been honored at an annual festival at his birthplace, during which his poem is recited. Songs from the Gitagovinda also continue to be sung in temples, during festivals, and at kirtanas (communal worship through song).

ALEX LEVITIN has published his translations from the Portugese in ca. 200 literary magazines and has contributed to 25 anthologies. He has also published 13 volumes of translations, including 7 collections of the poetry of Eugenio de Andrade, Portugal's foremost living poet (though not a sonneteer). Recent work has been supported by grants from the Witter Bynner Poetry Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.

CLARENCE KENNEDY (1892-1972) For all his working life, professor of Art History at Smith College; photographer to Duveen, Mackay, etc. and known especially for his photographs of sculptures from the Italian Renaissance. He was primarily interested in making reproductions of art of high quality available to the general public.

MELINDA KENNEDY Born in Northampton, spent much of her youth in Italy. Editor, translator, writer, she retired from teaching in 1989 and thereafter beecame co-editor of Metamorphoses. Her poems have appeared in such journals as The Southern and Massachusetts Review. She lives now in a former station in the Underground Railroad with her dog Ben.

SHIRLEY KUMOVE Has been active in publications of Yiddish women writers and has received several grants recognizing her work as a translator from the Yiddish.

DAN LEVIN A writer, author of several books and professor Emeritus and former writer-in-residence at Long Island University.

ANNA MARGOLIN Born in Russia in 1894, she arrived in New York City at the age of 18; she led a tempestuous and unconventional ilfe. Her writings won her critical acclaim, but little public recognition. She died, a recluse, in 1952.

W.S. MERWIN Has now settled on the island of Maui in Hawaii, where he divides his time between writing and cultivating his garden of tropical plants. A long-time translator, he is one of America's most celebrated poets, having won the most prestigious of America's prizes. He was recently a Chancellor of the American Academy of Poets.

WILLIAM MULLEN Professor at Bard College. His recent publications include Jefferson and Rome: Foundation and Fabric and The Agenda of the Milesian School. His poem "Enchanted Rock" was selected by John Hollander to appear in Best American Poems of 1998. The American Biographical Institute has chosen him this year for inclusion in Five Hundred Leaders of Influence, and the International Biographical Institute in Cambridge, England, has included him in The First Five Hundred.

ATHINA PAPADAKI A leftist and a feminist, Papadaki writes in the tradition of Elytis and Ritsos; she uses a particularly Greek form of surrealism, centered on the concrete realities of daily life. Drawing on liturgical and mythological references, and on the many levels of spoken Greek, she evokes a rich literary and popular tradition while always staying close to the experience and speech of a wide audience.

THALIA PANDIRI teaches Classics and Comparative Literature at Smith College. She holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University and is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome. She has translated and written on a range of ancient and modern Greek texts.

DAVID PATTERSON Emeritus President of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.

CAMILO PESSANHA (1867-1926) published only one book in his lifetime, Clepsidra, but he is an important symbolist and transitional figure heralding modernism. He spent much of his adult life in Macau, to which he returned before his deeath. His poetry fluctuates between concrete reality and symbolic forms of a personal nature.

PINDAR (ca. 522-442 B.C.) Greek lyric poet, employed by many winners at the Olympic Games to celebrate their victories, exercised a great influence on subsequent Latin poets. The English ode form is based on his odes.

ANTERO DE QUENTAL (1842-1891) born in the Azores, he studied at Coimbra and was central in introducing socialist ideas to Portugal. The leading figure of the so-called Generation of the Seventies, he relied on the classical form of the sonnet to give order to an inner life threatened with chaos.

JOSE RÉGIO (1901-1969) published equally in poetry, fiction, drama, the essay, and criticism. One of the founders of the famous literary magazine Presença in 1927, he was influenced by Dostoevsky and preoccupied with the problem of a self torn between good and evil. His work is religiously grounded and confessional in nature.

HIROAKI SATO Leading translator of Japanese poetry. He is currently at work on an anthology of the writings of Japanese women poets from ancient to modern times.

LESLIE SCHENK Has served in the UN around the world, has published widely. He is on the Honor Roll of the Best American Short Stories, Bernard Ashton Raborg Essay Award in 1994, as well as being a finalist in several other competitions.

LASZLO TIKOS Editor-in-Chief of Metamorphoses. A native of Hungary, he is a professor of Slavic Languages and Literature at the University of Massachusetts. The author of many translations from the Russian, he has recently published Gogol's Art: A Search for Identity (Bati Publishers 1997).

MASAKO TAKEDA Has edited and translated the poems of Emily Dickinson into Japanese. She teaches at Osaka Shoin Women's College.

NICOLAU TOLENTINO (1740-1811) considered Portugal's greatest satiric or comic poeet. A sagacious chronicler of his times, he is most valued for the lively gallery of types with which he depicted the human comedy of 18th Century Lisbon.

BELLA VERNIKOVA grew up in the Brezhnev era and was convinced of the need for a Perestroika in Soviet Russia long before its finally occurring. She was born and raised in Odessa, the Black Seaport famous for musical prodigies, smugglers, gangsters; its mud and dirt; and for its heroic defense against the Nazis in World War II. Her love for her city is an important theme and gainsays an underlying disillusionment. Her work has appeared in leading Soviet literary magazines such as Raduga (Rainbow) and Yunost (Youth).