CONTRIBUTORS
Fall 2009

AMANDA AIZPURIETE was born in Jurmala in 1956 and studied philosophy and philology at the Latvian State University and at the M. Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow. Seven books of her poetry have been published, including Kapu iela (Ascension Street, 1986), Pedeja vasara, (The Last Summer, 1995), Babeles nomale (The Outskirts of Babel, 1999), Virsu debesis (In Skies of Heather, 2003), Vestulu vejs (Windfall of Poems, 2004), and a novel. She has been poetry editor for the magazine Avots (Wellspring) and co-editor of the newspaper Aspazija, the magazine Karogs (Flag), and Vides Vestis (The Herald). The American composer Eric Fank used Aizpuriete's poetry for his symphony for contralto and full orchestra "This Evening Seems to Have Gone Bad" and the mono-opera "Anna Ahmatova." Aizpuriete has received the Bavarian Art Academy's Poetry Award (1999) and the Days of Poetry Award in Latvia (2000), as well as the Annual Award in Literature for the Best Translation (2003). She has translated Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Next, Franz Kafka's The Trial, John Updike's The Witches of Eastwick, Virginia Wolfe's Orlando, in addition to other novels, and the poetry of, among others, Anna Ahmatova, Josef Brodski, Uve Kolbe, and Georg Trakl. Aizpuriete has also edited several anthologies of Latvian poetry, and was a member of the Latvian delegation to the European writers' event "Literature Express Europe 2000." Finnish publishing house Sammakko released a selection of her poems titled Vihreäsilmäinen yö (A Green-Eyed Night) in 2006.

CECCO ANGIOLIERI (1258-1320), a Sienese poet best known for his sonnet "S'i' fosse fuoco" [If I were fire, I'd torch the whole world] and his tenzone, or poets' battle, with Dante. Decidedly different in spirit and style from the dolce stil nuovo poets, he is more representative of the poeti burleschi or giocosi who look backward to the Goliardic poets. His use of colloquial and regional language, his real-world similes, as well as his gift for mockery, self-irony, and comic deflation, attest to that affinity.

APOLLONIUS OF RHODES (fl. 265 BC) was the head librarian of the Library at Alexandria in Egypt and tutor of the future king Ptolemy III. His romance epic Argonautika, written in the language of the Homeric epics but in accordance with Hellenistic aesthetic criteria, tells the story of how Jason came to Medea's land and with her help obtained the golden fleece.

MARIA NEMCOVA BANERJEE Professor of Russian Literature at Smith College, Maria Nemcova Banerjee's publications include Terminal Paradox: The Novels of Milan Kundera, The Lime Tree in Prague, and Dostoevsky: The Scandal of Reason. She often collaborates with her husband, poet translator Ron D. K. Banerjee on translations of Russian and Czech poetry.

NEDRA EILEEN BICKHAM is a translator, musician, teacher, and explorer of the unique coexistence of language and music. Her translations of short stories by the German author Julia Franck have appeared in Passport: The Arkansas Review of Literary Translation, Absinthe: New European Writing, and lauter niemand: Berliner Zeitschrift fur Lyrik und Prosa. Her translations of poetry by Andreas Randow have appeared in Perihelion Poetry Journal. She is working on a master's degree in German Language and Literature from Tufts University.

ASTRID CABRAL is a leading poet and environmentalist from the Amazonian region of Brazil. She is the translator of Thoreaus Walden into Portuguese. Recent collections of her poetry include The Anteroom, Gazing Through Water, and Cage. Her poems have appeared in Pleiades, Runes, Sirena, Amazonian Literary Review, Cincinnati Review, Confrontation, Calque, Dirty Goat, Per Contra (on-line), and Poetry East.

NATALIA CARBAJOSA received a doctorate in English Literature from the University of Salamanca with highest honors and teaches English at the Technical University of Cartagena. Her literary publications include Los puentes sumergidos (The Submerged Bridges; poetry, 2000); Patologias (Pathologies; short stories, 2005); Pronóstico (Forecast; poetry, 2005); The Kingdoms and the Hours/Himeneo and his Names (poetry, 2006); Prosopoemas (Prosepoems; poetry, 2008); and an annotated translation of H.D. (Trilogia, 2008).

INARA CEDRINS is an artist, writer, and translator of Latvian descent who received her BA in Writing from Columbia College in Chicago and her MA in Arts Administration at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her anthology of contemporary Latvian poetry written while Latvia was under Soviet occupation was published by the University of Iowa Press, and she is currently working on a new Baltic anthology.

EVA CLAESON, one of the founding editors of Metamorphoses in 1991, spent her early life in Germany, Belgium and Cuba, and the 1950s in the San Francisco Renaissance. She then lived in Sweden and England for thirty-six years and has lived north of Amherst, MA since 1991. She has translated short stories, novels, and poetry from Swedish to English.

MARGARETA EKSTRÖM has published about thirty much admired works that include novels, collections of short stories, poetry, reflections, diaries, and translations from the English. Two collections of her short stories as well as two of her books of reflections have been translated by Eva Claeson and published in the U.S. Claeson's translations of her poetry have also appeared in literary journals. To Johanna, the book from which the poems in this issue were taken, was written at the birth of her daughter, who is now a poet herself and a painter.

CRISTINA FERNÁNDEZ-CUBAS was born in 1945 in Catalunya, Spain. She began her career as a journalist and has since become a very popular writer in Spain, whose novels have earned high critical acclaim. Her first novel, Mi hermana Elba (My Sister Elba) was published in 1980. Cosas que ya no existen (Things That No Longer Exist), the novel from which the selection in this issue is taken, is a collection of memories from her childhood and early adulthood.

BRETT FOSTER has published translations of Angiolieri's sonnets in Yale Italian Poetry, Italian Poetry Review, The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Journal of Italian Translation, Eleven Eleven, and other journals. His poetry and criticism have appeared in Agni, Arion, Boston Review, Columbia, The Georgia Review, Harvard Review, Hudson Review, Image, Literary Imagination, The Missouri Review, Prose Studies, Raritan, Southwest Review, and in the anthologies American Religious Poems and Best New Poets 2007. He has also published translations of poems by Persius, Saint-Amant, Giovanni Pascoli, and Miklós Radnóti.

JULIA FRANCK was born in East Berlin and moved with her family to West Berlin in 1978. She now works as a freelance author and journalist, and to date has had three novels and two short story collections published. She won the 3Sat Prize at the Ingeborg Bachmann Competition (2000), the "Roswitha Preis" from the city of Bad Gandersheim, and has recently completed a writing fellowship at the Villa Massimo in Rome. Her newest novel is entitled, Die Mittagsfrau (2007) for which she was awarded the coveted German Book Prize, and her 2005 novel Lagerfeuer will be adapted for the screen later this year.

ESPIDO FREIRE was born in Bilbao, Spain, in 1974. She is the author of several novels, including Irlanda (1998), Melocotones helados (winner of the 1999 Planeta Prize), Nos espera la noche (2003), and Soria Moria (2008). Her novels have been translated into over a dozen languages, including French, German, and Portuguese. English translations of her fiction have appeared in Fairy Tale Review, Gargoyle, The Modern Review, and Words Without Borders.

MARGUERITE ITAMAR HARRISON is Associate Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at Smith College. She has a Master's degree from the University of Texas at Austin in Latin American Art History and a PhD in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies from Brown University. She has edited Uma Cidade em Camadas, a transnational volume of essays on contemporary Brazilian writer Luiz Ruffato, published in Brazil in 2007. Her work has appeared in Brasil/Brazil, Chasqui: Journal of Latin American Literature, Latin American Literary Review, Luso-Brazilian Review, Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, Women's Review of Books, and other publications. She is currently researching the work of Brazilian women filmmakers and visual artists.

YEHUDIT BEN ZVI HELLER, poet and translator, was born and raised in Israel and moved to Amherst in 1984 with her husband and children. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) where she teaches literature. Her original (Hebrew) poetry and translations have appeared in a number of Israeli and American literary reviews, and her poems and critical writing have been published in anthologies. She has to her credit three books of poetry in Hebrew: Ha'isha Beme'il Sagol (The Woman in the Purple Coat), Tel-Aviv: Eked Publishing,1996; Kan Gam Bakayitz Hageshem Yored (Here, Even in the Summer it Rains), Tel-Aviv: Eked Publishing, 2003; and Mehalekhet al Khut shel Mayim (Pacing on a Thread of Water), Jerusalem: Carmel Publishing, 2009. Anakim Al Pney Ha'aretz (Giants in the Earth), her translation from English to Hebrew of the first volume of Ole Edvart Rolvaag's trilogy Saga of the Prairie is forthcoming in 2010 from Hakibbutz Hameuhad, Tel Aviv.

GRACIA IGLESIAS studied Journalism at the University of Madrid and writes for the cultural sections of various media publications. She has published three books of poetry: Sospecho che soy humo (I suspect I am smoke; 2002), which won the Gloria Fuertes Prize for Poetry, awarded by Torremozas; Aunque cubras mi cuerpo de cerezas (Though you cover my body with cherries, 2004), awarded Miguel Hernández National Poetry Prize from the Instituto Alicantino de Cultura Juan Gil-Albert; and Distintos métodos para hacer elefantes (Different methods to make elephants, 2006). Her poetry is linked to her work in painting and theatre. Examples of her recent multimedia and performance work as well as poetry can be found on her webpage and blog.

ADRIANA X. JACOBS is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature at Princeton University and teaches Hebrew literature at Hofstra University. Her translations and poems have appeared in Kritya, Drunken Boat, and Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture. She is currently working on an English translation of Maya Arad's novel-in-verse, Makom acher ve-'ir zarah (Another Place, a Foreign City).

TOSHIYA KAMEI is the translator of The Curse of Eve and Other Stories (2008) by Liliana V. Blum and La Canasta: An Anthology of Latin American Women Poets (2008), as well as selected works by Espido Freire.

ANDREAS KARKAVITSAS (1866-1922) is a Greek writer of short fiction and several novels depicting village life and the traditions, customs, and legends that he discovered in his travels throughout the country as an army doctor.

J. KATES is a poet and literary translator who lives in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire.

INGRID LANSFORD holds a PhD in English from the University of Texas at Austin. Her prose translations from Danish, English, and German have appeared in a dozen journals and anthologies. She received the Leif and Inger Sjöberg Translation Prize of the American-Scandinavian Foundation in 2004 and a grant from Denmark's Kunststyrelsen in 2007.

HEZY LESKLY (1952-1994) was born in Rehovot, Israel to Czech parents. After dropping out of high school, he devoted himself to an extensive study of dance and choreography. He lived for several years in Holland where he studied multimedia arts. Upon his return to Israel, he began a brief but productive career as a dance critic, playwright, and choreographer. His first collection of poems, The Finger, appeared in 1986, and by the time of his death from AIDS, he was regarded as one of the major literary voices of his generation. His last book, Dear Perverts, was published posthumously in 1994.

ALEXIS LEVITIN's twenty-fifth book of translations, Astrid Cabral's Cage, was published by Host Publications in July 2008. Earlier books include Clarice Lispector's Soulstorm and Eugenio de Andrade's Forbidden Words (both published by New Directions). His work has appeared in over two hundred magazines, including Kenyon Review, New England Review, Partisan Review, New Letters, and American Poetry Review.

MILTIADES MATTHIAS was born in Old Phaliron, near Athens, Greece. He is a concert pianist, who has devoted a great part of his career to the dissemination of music by Greek composers, as well as being a composer himself. His credo for translating poetry is: "It is not enough to get the sense of a poem across. Speech must be transformed into song: you've got to catch the tune!"

SUSAN MATTHIAS's translation of Nobel Laureate Greek poet George Seferis's only completed novel, Six Nights on the Acropolis, was published in 2007 as part of the Modern Greek Literature Library (Cosmos Publishing). In 2006, she received her PhD in Comparative Literature from New York University, where she currently teaches. In 2009, her translation of Seferis's essay, "Introduction to T.S. Eliot," the poet's preface to his 1936 translation of The Waste Land, appeared in the journal Modernism/Modernity (Volume 16, Number 1). Other translations of works by modern Greek authors have appeared in publications including the Harvard Review, Dialogos, the Journal of Modern Greek Studies, and Conjunctions.

ARVIND KRISHNA MEHROTRA is the author of four books of poems, the most recent of which is The Transfiguring Places (1998), and one of translation, The Absent Traveller: Prâkrit Love Poetry from the Gâthâsaptaúatî of Sâtavâhana Hâla (1991), recently reissued in Penguin Classics. His edited books include The Oxford India Anthology of Twelve Modern Indian Poets (1992), A History of Indian Literature in English (2003), which was Choice magazine's outstanding academic title of the year, and The Last Bungalow: Writings on Allahabad (2007). He lives in Allahabad and Dehra Dun.

ANNA NEWMAN graduated from Smith College with a BA in Italian Language and Literature in May 2009. She served as the copy and production editor for Metamorphoses from June 2008 to May 2009.

ANDREA E. OLSEN has a Master's degree in translation from Rutgers University (2008). She teaches Spanish at Biotechnology High School in Freehold, NJ.

LYDIA MIRANDA ORAM is a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature at New York University, with a dissertation on the representation of the Mafia in Italian and American film. She holds an MPhil from N.Y.U. in Comparative Literature, an MA from Columbia University in Italian Language and Literature, a diploma with honors (ciclo superior, castellano) from the Escuela de idiomas in Alicante, Spain, and a BA in Spanish and Italian from Smith College. She has published translations of fiction, essays and interviews from Spanish and Italian, and critical articles on Elsa Morante's La Storia and Gustavo Sáinz's Gazapo. Her areas of specialization include 20th century Latin American and medieval Italian literature, 20th century Latin American and Peninsular literature, modernist and avant-garde poetry, film and television studies, and translation studies. She has taught Italian at Columbia University and Comparative Literature at N.Y.U. Her other interests include the history of food and wine and writing fiction.

THALIA PANDIRI, editor-in-chief of Metamorphoses since 1999, is Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at Smith College. She holds a PhD from Columbia University and is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome. Her current projects include survivor narratives from the Asia Minor Disaster and the revival of griko and grecanico dialects in Southern Italy.

AARON POOCHIGIAN's translations, with introduction and notes, of Sappho's poems and fragments are due out from Penguin Classics in 2009. His translations of Aeschylus, Aratus, and Apollonius of Rhodes will appear in the forthcoming Norton Anthology of Greek Literature in Translation, edited by Rachel Hadas. His original poems and translations have appeared in numerous journals, including Chronogram: A Journal of Arts and Culture, Classical Journal, The Dark Horse, Smartish Pace, and Unsplendid. He holds a PhD in Classics from the University of Minnesota and is currently D.L. Jordon Fellow at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia.

MILA RAMOS studied History at the University of Córdoba, specializing in cooperation and development management. She was a freelance war correspondent in the former Yugoslavia. Her work for an NGO providing assistance to women in international conflict areas has led her to Bosnia, Kosovo, Morocco, Palestine, Colombia, and Mali. She has published three books of poetry, Tautologia (Tautology, 1995), 8.000 razones para la memoria (8,000 reasons for remembering, 2004), and La frontiera número 11 (Frontier number 11, 2008) as well as a wide range of articles on women and war. She was awarded a regional prize in Andalusia for her literary and activist work.

WOLFDIETRICH SCHNURRE was born in Frankfurt in 1920 but moved to Berlin as a boy. He spent the last part of WWII in a penal unit for caricaturing the military and attempting to desert. After returning to West Berlin, he became a very successful writer of poetry, stories, and radio plays, who illustrated his own works. He received many German prizes, including the Büchner Prize in 1983. Ill with polyneuritis for the last twenty-five years of his life, he became more and more reclusive and died in relative obscurity at Kiel in 1989.

GEORGE SEFERIS (1900-1971), one of Greece's foremost poets of the twentieth century, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1963. Known also for his essays, diaries, and one novel, Seferis had a distinguished diplomatic career, which culminated in his position as Ambassador to Great Britain.

CAROLYN SHREAD is Visiting Assistant Professor of French at Mount Holyoke College and Lecturer at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She holds a doctorate in French and Francophone Studies from the University of Massachusetts, where she also completed a master's degree in translation studies with a translation of Marie Vieux-Chauvet's Les Rapaces. Her co-translation of Fatima Gallaire's play, Les co-épouses, as House of Wives was published in Four Plays from North Africa (2008) and her article "Translating Fatima Gallaire's Les co-épouses: Lessons from a Francophone Text" appeared in Translating and Interpreting Studies 2007. Other recent articles include "La Traduction métramorphique: Entendre le kreyòl dans la traduction anglaise des Rapaces de Marie Vieux-Chauvet" Palimpsestes 22, 2009; "Redefining Translation through Self-Translation: The Case of Nancy Huston" French Literature Series, Vol. 26, 2009; "Translating Marie Vieux-Chauvet's Les Rapaces for a Transnational Haïti" Journal of Haitian Studies 14:2, 2008, and "Metamorphosis or Metramorphosis? Towards A Feminist Ethics of Difference in Translation" Traduction, terminologie, rédaction, 20:2, 2008. Her translation of Frederic Vandenberghe's Philosophical History of German Sociology was published by Routledge in 2009 and Catherine Malabou's Plasticity in the Dusk of Writing: Dialectic, Destruction, Deconstruction will be published by Columbia University Press in Fall 2009.

YOSHIRO TAKAYASU lives in Togane, Chiba, where he edits Village Tsushin. He is the author of several poetry collections, including Mukashi mukashi and Jigenkyo. English translations of his fiction and poetry have appeared in The Dirty Goat, Visions International, and Yomimono.

RENÉ VILLARD was a Breton journalist, English teacher, and military interpreter on the Somme front during the World War I. In 1939, he published a single volume of poems, De l'aube au crépuscule (From Dawn to Dusk) with a preface by his schoolmate, colleague, and friend, Max Jacob. He died in 1940.

KETO VON WABERER, born 1942 in Augsburg, Germany, has about ten short story volumes and several novels to her credit. Her father was a Bolivian architect, and after growing up in Austria, she herself studied architecture in Mexico City and practiced it in Germany before turning entirely to literature. Most of her works are about love in all its forms and the fragility of relationships. She is a member of the German branch of PEN.