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Ma Jian is the author of Red Dust, which won the Thomas Cook Travel Award, The Noodle Maker, and Stick Out Your Tongue. He was born in Qingdao in 1953 and moved to Hong Kong in 1986, shortly before his works were banned in China. After the handover of Hong Kong from the British to the Chinese in 1997, he moved to London, where he now lives.
Can Xue is the pen name of Deng Xiaohua. She was born in Changsha, Hunan, and still lives there. She first began writing in 1983, and her stories have appeared in various literary magazines in mainland China as well as in Hong Kong and Taiwan. She is the author of Dialogues in Paradise, Old Floating Cloud: Two Novellas, and The Embroidered Shoes.
Jo Kyung Ran earned her undergraduate degree in creative writing from Seoul Institute of the Arts and debuted in 1996 with The French Optician. That same year her novel Time for Baking Bread won the first Literary Community New Writer’s Award. Her published works include Changing Season, Beautiful Knife, Your Side, My Purple Sofa, Binoculars, Glass Zoo, and Family Prayer.
Seno Gumira Ajidarma was born in Boston in 1958 while his father was a student there. He began working as a journalist at the age of nineteen, and in 1980, he graduated with a degree in cinematography from the Jakarta Institute of the Arts. Since that time he has produced a number of screenplays but has achieved much greater success as a short story writer and novelist. To date he has published twenty-eight books and has been awarded numerous national and international literary awards, most recently in 2004 for his novel Country of Twilight (Negeri Senja). A previous novel, Jazz, Perfume & the Incident, is one of a select number of contemporary Indonesian novels that have been translated and published in English.
Parashuram (Rajshekhar Basu) (1880–1960), writer, scientist, and lexicographer, was born in West Bengal. His twenty-one books, published under the pseudonym Parashuram, include the satires Shri Shri Siddheshvari Limited (1922), Gaddalika (1924), Kajjali (1927), Hanumaner Svapna (1937), and Galpakalpa (1950), the short stories included in Krsnakali (1953) and Anandibai (1957), and the essays anthologized in Laghuguru (1939), Bharater Khanij (1943), Kutirshilpa (1943), and Bichinta (1955). He also published a number of translations, including Meghdut (1943), Valmiki Ramayana (1946), Mahabharata (1949), and Hitopadesher Galpa (1950). His Bengali dictionary, Chalantika (1937), is still widely used.
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Goli Taraghi was born in Tehran. She began her writing career with a collection of short stories entitled I Am Che Guevara Too in 1969. Her first novel, Winter Sleep, was published in 1973 and has been translated into English and French. Her most recent books are Scattered Memories, In Another Place, and Two Worlds. Two of her recent collections of stories, The House of Shemiran and The Three Maids, have been published in France. Taraghi lives in Tehran and Paris.
Jabbar Yussin Hussin is an Iraqi novelist and poet who left Iraq in 1976 to avoid persecution by the government of Saddam Hussein. He has published a number of books, in both French and Arabic, blending the Iraqi literary tradition with the experience of exile. He visited Iraq in 2003, after Hussein was overthrown, and shortly theareafter published his most recent book, The Reader of Baghdad.
Saniyya Saleh (1935–85) was born in Mousiaf, a city on the west coast of Syria. She studied English literature at the American Lebanese University in Beirut, Lebanon, where she met her future husband, the Syrian poet and playwright Muhammad Maghout. She wrote her last poems while losing her battle with illness. She won several awards for her poetry, including the al-Nahar and al-Hasnaa awards. Her works include the short story collection al-Ghobar (The Dust) and the poetry collections al Zaman al-Daiq (The Tight Time), Hiber al-Idaam (The Assassination Ink), Qasaed (Poems), and Zacar al-Ward (The Male Rose), the last of which was published after her death.
Adania Shibli was born in Palestine in 1974. She has been publishing since 1996 in literary magazines in the Arab world and Europe. Shibli has twice been awarded the Young Writer’s Award of Palestine by the A. M. Qattan Foundation for her two novels Masaas (Touching), al-Adab, 2002, translated into French as Reflets sur un mur blanc (Actes-sud, 2004), and Kulluna Ba’eed Bethat al Miqdar ‘an al Hub (We Are All Equally Far from Love), al-Adab, 2004, and is working toward a Ph.D. in media and cultural studies from the University of East London.
Hassan Khader is a writer and literary critic and editor of the literary journal al-Karmel. He has published several books on Palestinian and Israeli literature, including Hostages of Time: A Reading of Palestinian Literature and Identity of the Other, on identity crisis in Israeli literature, and an autobiography, Land of the Deer.
Gamal al-Ghitani was born in 1945 and educated in Cairo. He has written thirteen novels and six collections of short stories. He is currently editor in chief of the literary review Akhbar al-adab.
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Akinwumi Isola was born in Ibadan, Nigeria, and is a retired professor of Yoruba literature at Obafemi Awolowo University. He is a fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters and has received the Nigerian National Order of Merit. He is the author of five plays and three novels, including Madame Tinubu, and translator of Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman and Aké: The Years of Childhood into Yoruba. He has also directed the production of many plays and films.
Gabriela Adamesteanu was born in 1942 in Targu Ocna, Romania. She has worked in literary and encyclopedic publishing and has been the editor in chief of the magazine 22. Her awards and honors include the Romanian Academy Award for Fiction (1975), the Romanian Writers Union Award (1984), a Hellman Hammett Grant, administered by Human Rights Watch (2002), and the National Award for Fiction (2004). She is the author of the novels Drumul egal al fiecarei zile (The Equal Pace of Every Day), Dimineata pierduta (Wasted Morning), Intalnirea (Meeting), and the short story collections Daruieste-ti o zi de vacanta (Give Yourself a Holiday) and Vara-primavara (Summer-Spring). Her work has been translated into French, German, Russian, and Bulgarian.
Senadin Musabegovic´ was born in 1970 in Sarajevo, Bosnia, where he lived most of his life. During the siege of Sarajevo, he was in the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina where he also worked for the BH Press. In 1995 he published his first book of poetry, Udarci tijela (Body Strikes), which included the poem “Nabrajanje” (Enumeration) for which he won the Ljiljan Award. His second book of poetry, Odrastanje domovine (The Maturing of the Homeland ) (1999), won the Planjax Prize for the best Bosnian poetry collection and the Writers Association of Bosnia-Herzegovina Award for the best book published in Bosnia. In 2004 he published his most recent book, Lopata (The Heavenly Sphere). He holds an M.A. in political philosophy from the University of Siena and defended doctoral thesis, “War—Reconstruction of the Totalitarian Body” at the European Institute, Florence, in 2004.
Giorgio Manganelli (1922–90) first emerged as a literary innovator in 1964, both as the author of the experimental novel Hilarotragoedia, a phenomenological monologue, and as a member of Gruppo 63 (Group 63), a school of literature that stressed form over content. He also contributed to the avant-garde journals Grammatica (Grammar) and Quindici (Fifteen). In 1967 he published La letteratura come menzogna (Literature as a Lie), a collection of essays that characterized popular literature as nonsocial, artificial, and nonphilosophical. Manganelli’s other essay collections include Lunario dell’orfano sannita (Almanac of the Sannite Orphan; 1973), Angosce di stile (Anguish of Style; 1981), and Laboriose inezie (Arduous Trifles; 1986). Among his other works are Agli dèi ulteriori (To Farther Gods; 1972), A e B (A and B; 1975), Centuria (1979), and Rumori o voci (Noises or Voices; 1987).
Eleonora Hummel was born in 1970 in Kazakhstan. In 1980 her family moved to the Northern Caucasus; two years later they moved to Dresden. She has published fiction and has been a frequent contributor to magazines and journals. In 2001 she received a grant to participate in the Fifth Klagenfurt “literary course” associated with the prestigious Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, and in 2002 was awarded a Baden- Württemberg Russian German Culture Prize for Young Artists. In 2003 she received a grant and residency from the Schoeppingen Artists’ Colony. Eleonora Hummel works as a multilingual secretary and lives with her husband and two children in Dresden.
Born in 1953, Bronisl⁄aw Maj is the author of seven volumes of poetry, which have won him prestigious literary prizes, a reputation as one of the finest poets of his generation, and a place in many anthologies of contemporary poetry published both in Poland and abroad. Maj is also the author of a book about Tadeusz Gajcy, a poet who died during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. He writes newspaper columns and has edited the literary quarterly Na Gl⁄bs for many years. He lives in Kraków and teaches at the Jagiellonian University and the School of Creative Writing.
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Myriam Anissimov was born in 1943 in a refugee camp in Sierre, Switzerland. A journalist and literary critic, she published her first novel, Comment va Rachel? in 1973, and has published eight other novels since then. Her biography of Primo Levi, Primo Levi: Tragedy of an Optimist (1996), has been translated into nine languages. She is also the author of the biography Romain Gary the Chameleon.
Etel Adnan is an Arab American poet, essayist, and painter. She came to the United States in 1955 as a philosophy student. She taught philosophy and joined the movement of American poets against the war in Vietnam. She writes mainly in English though sometimes in French, the language she first learned in Beirut’s French schools. She lives in California and Paris.
Johan Harstad was born in 1979 and debuted in 2001 with a collection of texts entitled From Here On You Just Get Older. In 2002 he published Ambulance, a collection of short stories, and in 2005 he published his first novel, Buzz Aldvin, Where Did You Go in All the Confusion, which is currently being translated into Swedish, Danish, Finnish, German, Dutch, French, Italian, Russian, and Faroese. His prizes and awards include the 2003 Bjørnson grant and a 2000 grant from Gyldendal. He is currently at work on a play called Washingtin.
Juan Villoro, born in Mexico City in 1956, is the author of the novels El testigo, El disparo de argón, and Materia dispuesta. He has been honored with the Herralde Prize for his novel El testigo (2004), the Xavier Villaurrutia Award for his short story collection La casa pierde (House Loses), the Mazatlán Award for his collection of essays entitled Efectos personales (Personal Effects) (2001), and the International Board on Books for the Young Award for the children’s novel El profesor Zíper y la fabulosa guitarra eléctrica. He has been a professor at the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) in Mexico City, Yale University, and the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. He has translated many books into Spanish including Memoirs of an Anti-Semite, by Gregor von Rezzori, and A Tree of Night, by Truman Capote, and he is also the translator of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg’s Aphorisms. For three years he was the director of La Jornada Semanal, the weekly cultural supplement of the Mexican newspaper La Jornada, and his literary writing and reportage have appeared in La Jornada, Reforma, El País, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Granta, Proceso, and Letras Libres, among other publications.
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Mario Bellatin was born in Mexico. His novel, Flores (Flowers) (1994) won the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize in 2000. His work has been translated into German, French, and English. His other books include: Shiki Nagaoka: Una nariz de ficción (Pinocchio Tales), Perros Heroes (Heroic Dogs), Lecciones para una liebre muerta (Lessons for a Dead Hare), and Salon de belleza (Beauty Salon).
Ambar Past, born in North Carolina, has lived in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, since 1974. She is a Mexican citizen and writes in Spanish and Tzotzil. She coordinates a papermaking and publishing cooperative, Taller Leñateros, and edits the poetry magazine Jícara. Her latest publishing project is Incantations by Mayan Women.
Horacio Castellanos Moya, born in 1957 in El Salvador, is one of the most important Central American writers alive today. He has published eight novels, some of which have been translated into French, German, Italian, and Portuguese; he has published five short story collections. He worked many years as a journalist in Mexico City, Guatemala, and San Salvador. He has also lived in Canada, Costa Rica, Spain, and, from 2004 to 2006, in Frankfurt in a program supported by the Frankfurt International Book Fair. His first novel to appear in English, Senselessness, will be published by New Directions in 2007.
Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Evelyne Trouillot lives and works in her country as a university professor of French and pedagogy. She divides most of her time between writing and teaching. Since her first book of short stories, La chambre interdite (1996), Trouillot has published two other books of short stories, tales and stories for children, two books of poems (in French and Creole), and an essay on human rights and childhood in Haiti. Her first novel, Rosalie l’infâme (2003), received the Prix Soroptimist de la Romancière francophone for 2004 and second place for the Prix Carbet des Lycéens also in 2004. In 2005, her play Le bleu de l’ile received first prize for the Prix Beaumarchais de la Caraibe and was read at the Théâtre du Rond-Point in Paris in April 2005. Her most recent books are a collection of Creole poetry, Plidetwal, and her second novel, L’oeil-totem.
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The Argentine writer and translator Marcela Solá studied philosophy at the Universidad Católica Argentina, Santa María de los Buenos Aires. Her publications include the novel El silencio de Kind (Kind’s Silence), published by Planeta in 1999 and short-listed for the Planeta Prize; a volume of poetry, Acta de Defunción (Act of Death; 1994), winner of the Poesía Arcano Prize; and three books of short stories, Los condenados visten de blanco (The Condemned Wore White; 1971), Mis propios ojos no dan abasto (My Eyes Are Not Enough; 1976), and Manual de Situaciones Imposibles (Manual for Impossible Situations; 1990). She also edited Qué quieren las mujeres (What Women Want), published by Lumen in 1994. She has taught at the University of Laval, in Quebec, and currently teaches Argentine literature in the Multicultural Program of the Universidad de Belgrano, in Buenos Aires. In 1984 she won a Fulbright scholarship to join the International Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa.
Juan José Saer was born in Serodino, Argentina, in 1937, the son of Arab immigrants. He taught at the Santa Fe Instituto de Cinematografía, then moved to Paris in 1968 and taught literature at the University of Rennes until his retirement in 2002. In 1987 he was awarded the prestigious Spanish literary prize, the Premio Nadal, for his novel La ocasión (The Opportunity). In 2003 he was awarded the Prix France Culture and in 2004 the prestigious Prize of the Unión Latina. He died in June 2005 in Paris. Saer’s extensive literary oeuvre, which includes about twenty novels and collections of stories, is regarded as one of the most important in contemporary Argentine literature since that of Jorge Luis Borges. Many of his works have been translated into multiple languages.
Juan Forn was born in Buenos Aires in 1959. After publishing his first and only book of poetry in 1979, he traveled to Europe, and upon his return to Buenos Aires he began working in the publishing business as a translator, reader, and editor. Forn worked as an associate editor for Planeta and as the director of the literary supplement of the Argentine newspaper Página 12. In 1987 he published his first novel, Corazones cautivos más arriba (Up with Imprisoned Hearts). His second book, Nodar de noche (Swimming at Night), was published in 1991 and is being translated into English. Forn was named a Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Center (Washington, D.C.). He also received a grant from the Fondo Nacional de las Artes (Buenos Aires). His other books include Puras mentiras (Total Lies; 2001) and La tierra elegida (The Chosen Land; 2005).
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