Photo of Vizma Belševica by MargitaGutmane Photo of Dzvinia Orlowsky by Max Hoffman. Photoof Sándor Csoóri by permission of BOA. Photo of KarenBlomain by Michael Downend Photo of Aliki Barnstone by KatherineDumas All other Latvian poet photos courtesy of the Latvian Writer’s Union. Photo of Lucija Stupica by Sven Paustian Photos of J.C.Todd,Māris Salējs, Kārlis Vērdiņš, byRebecca Seiferle Latvian FeatureEdited by J.C. Todd and Margita Gailitis Latvian Poet Contributor Notes prepared by JānisElsbergs, Margita Gailitis, J. C. Todd

Fall/Winter 2005 EduardsAivars (b. 1956) Poet and essayist, he has publishedfive volumes of poetry. The most recent volume received the LatvianPoetry Prize (2002). He uses his pen name when publishing poetry, andhis birth name, Aivars Eipurs, for his work as therapist in theMinnesota program for drug and alcohol counseling. AmandaAizpuriete (b. 1956) Widely published poet andtranslator. Since 1980, she has published 8 books of poetry and onenovel in Latvian, with books published in translation in Sweden andGermany. Her poetry and prose has been published in anthologies inScandinavia, the Baltics, Iceland, France, Germany, Russia, Canada andU.S.A. Eric Funk has composed a symphony with text from her “ThisEventide Seems Spoiled.” She has translated Georg Trakl, JosephBrodsky, Virginia Woolf, Ken Kesey and John Updike. She received theprestigious Horst Bienek Prize from the Bavaria Academy of Art (1999);the Latvian Poetry Prize (2000) for Bābeles nomalē(Outskirts of Babel); the Latvian Book Prize (2003) fortranslations of Anna Akhmatova. Abayomi Animashaun is a Nigerian emigré who came to the UnitedStates in the late 1990s. His works have appeared or are forthcoming insuch places as New Orphic Review and The Guardian. He hasserved as an editorial staff for Red Rock Review, and he was afinalist for the Marble Faun Prize in Poetry from the William FaulknerSociety in 2004. AlikiBarnstone is a poet, translator, critic, and editor. Herbooks of poems are Blue Earth (Iris, 2004), Wild With It(Sheep Meadow, 2002), a National Books Critics Circle Notable Book,Madly in Love (Carnegie-Mellon, 1997), Windows inProvidence (Curbstone, 1981), and The Real Tin Flower (whichwas introduced by Anne Sexton and was published by Macmillan in 1968,when she was twelve years old). She has been nominated for the PulitzerPrize twice. She edited A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity toNow (Schocken, 1980; second edition, 1992), The Calvinist Rootsof the Modern Era (University Press of New England, 1997), TheShambhala Anthology of Women’s Spiritual Poetry (Shambhala, 1999;2003), and she introduced and wrote the readers’ notes for H.D.’sTrilogy (New Directions, 1998). Her poems have appeared inBoulevard, The Georgia Review, New Letters,Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review,TriQuarterly, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere.She has recorded a collaborative C.D. with musician Frank Haney. Hertranslation, The Collected Poems of C.P. Cavafy: A NewTranslation is forthcoming in with W.W. Norton in 2006. Alsoforthcoming in 2006 is her study of the development of Emily Dickinson’spoetry, Changing Rapture: The Development of Emily Dickinson’sPoetry, which will appear with University Press of New England in2006. Barnstone currently is Professor of English in the CreativeWriting International Program at the University of Nevada, LasVegas. Vizma Belševica (b. 1931; d. 2005) has seven volumes ofpoetry, and numerous awards in Latvia, including the OjārsVācietis Award (1988), the Order of the Three Stars (1995), and theCultural Ministry Award for Life Achievement in Literature (1997). HerSwedish awards include the Einar Forseth Foundation Award (1992) andTomas Transtromer Award (1998). Uldis Bērziņš (b.1944) Prolifictranslator and poet. His first poems appeared in 1963 but the first ofhis six volumes did not appear until the 1980s. His poetry has beentranslated into French, Swedish, Estonian, Lithuanian, Russian and otherlanguages. A polyglot, he has translated poems for many languages,including Turkish, Persian, Spanish, English, Polish, Swedish, Russianand Old Icelandic. His current project is translation of the Koran andthe Old Testament from Hebrew and Arabic into Latvian. His awardsinclude the Literary Award of the Baltic Assembly (1995) and Order ofthe Three Stars (1995). Karen Blomain160207, a professor at Kutztown University since 1990, holds anundergraduate degree and an MFA from Columbia. Her publications includetwo full-length collections and two chapbooks of poetry, the novel, ATrick of Light and numerous stories and essays published inperiodicals and anthologies, including the new anthology SuddenStories. She is the editor of a poetry anthology and theco-translator of numerous poems. Her work has been broadcast on NationalPublic Radio. A Trick of Light was recently selected forChapters, a city-wide book club sponsored by the Press and Sun Bulletinin Binghamton, New York. LeonsBriedis (b. 1949) Founding publisher and editor of theLatvian philosophical journal, Kentaurs XXI (Centaur XXI)and Minerva, Ltd. publishing house, he has published almost 20 volumesof poetry. He writes for both adults and children and translates fromPortuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Catalonian, Latin, Swahili, Russian,English and others. His international literary prizes include one fromthe Writers’ Union of Romania (1991) and the Order of the Three Starsfrom Latvia (1999). Ronalds Briedis (b. 1980) Poet and critic, he has published one volumeof poetry (2004) which received the best poetic debut award. He managesliterary projects for the Writers’ Union of Latvia. Inara Cedrins’ first anthology of contemporary Latvian poetry waspublished by the University of Iowa Press in 1981; her chapbook oftranslations of the poetry of Astrid Ivask, At the Fallow’s Edge,was a Small Press Book of the Month Club selection and went into asecond edition. She previously edited an issue of the online magazineOmega featuring Latvian poets (accessible at www.howlingdogpress.com). Her poems, stories and translations from the Latvian have appearedin The North American Review, Chelsea, PrairieSchooner, The Portland Int’l. Review, The Ledge,The Minnesota Review, Translation/Columbia University,the Massachusetts Review, Kansas Quarterly, The AtlantaReview, New Letters and The Chariton Review, amongothers. Sándor Csoóri , one of Hungary’s mostprominent and outspoken poets, is the author of seventeen books ofpoetry, six books of essays, two novels, and several film scripts. Hehas received numerous awards for his poetry, including the AttilaJózsef Prize in Poetry, The Hungarian Book of the Year Award(1995), the Károli Gáspár Award, the Hungarian HeritageAward and the prestigious Kossuth Award, Hungary’s greatest honor forachievement in artistic or scientific work. He was a major figure inthe founding of the Hungarian Democratic Forum and was Chairman of theWorld Federation of Hungarians from 1991-2000. He is a leadingproponent for the rights of ethnic Hungarians in other countries. Alexander Dovzhenko was born into a peasantfamily in the Desna River area in Northeast Ukraine in 1894. Along withSergei Eisenstein and Vasevolod Pudovkin, Dovzhenko is considered one ofthe Soviet Union’s greatest early filmmakers; his silent filmEarth (1930), a poetic tribute to Nature and Ukrainian villagelife, is still often regarded among the top ten best films of all time. In addition to his legacy as a silent film poet, he produced a briefautobiographical article of approximately twenty-one pages and twohundred and forty-five pages of notebooks that he kept from 1941 untilhis death. These record an intimate account of the Ukraine during theGerman invasion and occupation in the Second World War as wellDovzhenko’s inner development as film artist. Much has been lost;little exists in English print today. Dovzhenko died in 1956 aftersuffering two decades of Stalinist oppression. He left behind severalscripts, most of which had also been banned by Soviet censors. His wifeand creative partner, Yulia Solntseva, produced some of these includinga 1965 Mosfilm and Dovzhenko Film Studio production of The EnchantedDesna (Zachrovannaya Desna) based on his 1942-1948autobiographical film-tale. JānisElsbergs (b. 1969) Poet and translator, his first twovolumes were published under the pen name Jānis Ramba. Translatorof Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, Harold Pinter, Arthur Miller, Kurt Vonnegut,Walt Whitman, Charles Bukowski and American Beat poets such as GregoryCorso and Gary Snyder. His book, Rīta kafija (MorningCoffee)(1996) shows the Beat influence. He has been co-editor ofmajor Latvian literary journals, including Karogs and Lunaand head of the Young Authors’ Association. KlāvsElsbergs (b.1959; d. 1987) Poet and translator, hepublished two volumes of his poetry and one was published posthumously.A major translator of French poetry including a collection of poems byGuillaume Apollinaire. A leading poet of his generation, he was one ofthe founding editors of Avots, an influential intellectualmonthly that introduced avant garde and politically charged subjectsduring the period of Glasnost. Inga Gaile (b.1976)Winner of the Klāvs Elsbergs First Book Award (1999) and theOjārs Vācietis Award (2004) for her second volume. She alsotranslates from Russian the poetry of the Riga-based Orbita group. Margita Gailitis was born in Riga, Latvia, andis a writer, poet and translator. She left Latvia as a small child andafter several years spent in displaced persons camps in Germany,immigrated with her mother and two sisters to Canada. She has travelledextensively and has lived for extended periods of time in the U.S.,Jamaica, Italy and Spain. In 1998 she returned to Latvia to work at theTranslation and Terminology Centre in Riga on a Canadian InternationalDevelopment Agency sponsored project translating Latvian laws intoEnglish— a prerequisite for Latvia’s accession to the EU. Havingspent her professional life in Canada working in advertising andmarketing, she also assumed marketing and PR responsibilities for theTranslation Centre. Now Margita Gailitis concentrates her efforts onliterary translation and her poetry, which she writes in both Latvianand English. She has translated some of Latvia’s finest poetry and proseand been instrumental in organizing publishing opportunities for Latvianwriters in Canada, U.S., Spain and elsewhere. Her poetry has beenpublished in various periodicals and has been awarded both Ontario andCanada Council grants. Her poems have been published in a book“Freedom Half Blind”. Eve Grubin‘s first book of poems is Morning Prayer (The Sheep Meadow Press, 2005). Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, Conjunctions, The New Republic, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She teaches at The New School University, and she is a fellow at the Drisha Institute for Jewish Education. Astrīde Ivaska (b. 1926) Poet andprofessor. Author of 6 volumes of poetry in Latvian, she recentlyreturned to Latvia after many years abroad. In the United States shetaught at Oklahoma University and St. Olaf’s College and was a reviewerfor World Literature Today. Inara Cedrins’ English translationsof Ivaska’s selected poetry appeared in two volumes in the US. Inguna Jansone (b. 1963) Poet and translator,her major translations include Edgar Allen Poe, Richard Brautigan andFay Weldon. Her second poetry collection, Sampuns ar balzamu (Shampooand Balsam), was awarded the Anna Dagda Award (1998). Ana Jelnikar , born in 1975 in Ljubljana(Slovenia), received her secondary school education in London, graduatedin English and Sociology from the University of Ljubljana, and holds anMA in literature from the Open University (England). She is now doing aPhD at the University of London (SOAS). She has been translating from,and into, English for over a decade now. Her translation of IztokOsojnik’s book of poems Mister Today came out in 2003 byJacaranda Press (California), and Brane Mozetič’s poetry volumeButterflies was published in America in 2004. Her most recenttranslations of poetry collections include Iztok Geister’s Hymnn tothe Bush Tree and Taja Kramberger’s Mobilizations. Hertranslations have appeared in such literary magazines as Verse,Southern Humanities Review, Third Coast, and TheAmerican Poetry Review. She is also the translator of the firstSlovenian edition of C. G. Jung’s Man and His Symbols. Martha Kosir-Widenbauer was born in the US and grew up in Slovenia. Afterfinishing high school, she moved back to the US and completed universitystudies there, earning a Ph.D. in Hispanic Literature from VanderbiltUniversity in 2004, with the area of specialization in 18th and 19thSpanish Peninsular literature; however, she is also very interested intranslation studies. Her translations of the German poet Ulrike Draesnerwere published in the poetry journal Sirena produced at DickinsonCollege. JurisKronbergs (b. 1946) Born in Sweden of Latvian parents,he is an important figure in Latvian poetry and actively promotesLatvian literature in Sweden, translating dainas (folksongs), andBelševica, Skujenieks, Ziedonis and others authors into Swedish. Firstpublished in the mid-1960s, his recent collection Vilks vienacis (WolfOne-Eye) was published bilingually in Latvian and Swedish. His awardsinclude the Ojārs Vācietis award (1988) and the Order of theThree Stars (1998). LiānaLanga (b. 1960) Former director of the Latvian NationalCouncil of Culture, she began to publish in 1988, winning LatvianNational Literary Awards for two books, Te debesis, teciparnīca (NowHeaven, Now an Hourglass) (1997) andIepūt taurītē, Skorpion! (BlowYour Horn,Scorpion!, 2001). She translates from Russian and English and hasstudied literature at the New School in New York. Her legal name isLiāna Bokša. IevaLešinska (b.1958) is an editor, journalist, poetand translator living and working in Riga, Latvia. Once a culture editorfor Radio Free Europe in Munich, since 1993 Ms. Lesinska has been on theeditorial staff at the magazine Rigas Laiks and also holds afull-time position as English language editor at the central bank ofLatvia. She has received special notice for her translationsof Anglo American poets into Latvian, including T.S. Eliot’s TheWaste Land, Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish, as well as selectedpoems by Robert Frost, Seamus Heaney, D. H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, DylanThomas, and others. Her original poetry has appeared in Latvianperiodicals and anthologies. She is currently working on a book of“documentary fiction”. In this issue, she has translatedBērziņš, Gaile, Zirnitis, and Zandere. Inna Lisynanskaya was born in Baku in 1928. She began her writing careerat the age of twenty when her first poems were published in localmagazines. Later when she moved to Moscow her first collection of poetrywas published in the popular Soviet magazines, Youth and TheNew World. Her book of poetry, Devotion was published in1958. The translations in this issue are from The Music and theShore, published in 2000 by the Pushkin Foundation in St.Petersburg. Her latest collection, Under the Snow’s Light waspublished by the same publishing house in 2002. She has won theSoldzenitsyn Prize (1999), the State Literary Prize, and several prizesfrom different Russian literary magazines. She lives in Peredelkino. Janko M. Lozar, born 1973 in Novo mesto, Slovenia. In 2000, he receiveda B.A. in English translation and philosophy at the University ofLjubljana, Faculty of Arts. In 2005, he received a PhD in philosophy.Current occupation is assistant at the Ljubljana Faculty of Fine Arts,the Department of Philosophy. The scope of his translations ranges fromphilosophy (Richard Rorty), literary science, prose, two volumes ofpoetry (Brian Henry’s Astronaut and a selection of poems byJoshua Beckmann (Leaving New York)) as well as poems by variousauthors from Great Britain and USA who took part in the Slovenian poetryfestival Medana (Andrew Zawacki, Matthew Zapruder). He also translatesinto English (Lucija Stupica, Dane Zajc, Ales Steger). Andreea Luncan has an A B.A. in English and Romanian language and literature and an M.A. inBritish and American Cultural Studies. She has always lovedpoetry and translation. A member of the on-line literary group “WordsExchange”, she had her poems published in their first anthology as wellas in numerous literary magazines. Andreea currently resides in theWestern Romanian city of Timisoara with her husband and young son. Camelia Luncan was born in Oradea, Romania, in 1980. She was awarded aBachelor of Arts in 2002, at the University of Oradea, Faculty ofPhilology, with a major in Theology and minor in English Language. Sheis a graduate student of Educational Management at the University ofOradea and has been teaching English in High School in Oradea, Emanuel,for 3 years. Dr.Anette Márta is an Assistant Professor of Englishand Translation Studies at the University of Pécs, Hungary. Shestarted translating Csoóri’s poems as a senior student when LenRoberts was a visiting professor at the University of Pécs. Herfavorite Csoóri translations can be dated to her Fulbrightfellowship at the University of Iowa. Over the years, translating poetryhas become a somewhat neglected activity as research and teachingworkload diverted her focus. She got her PhD in linguistics in 2005. Ilze Klavina-Mueller, a native of Latvia, divides her time betweentranslation and poetry. Her translations of the work of VizmaBelševica include poems and selections from Belševica’s memoirBille, published in in The Review of Contemporary Fiction(Spring 1998). Her poems have appeared in Looking For Home: WomenWriting About Exile, CALYX, Water~Stone and otherjournals. She is a member of The Laurel Writers Collective, a group ofwriters and graphic artists living in the St. Paul-Minneapolis area. DzviniaOrlowsky is the author of three full-length poetrycollections published by Carnegie Mellon University Press: A Handfulof Bees (1994); Edge of House (1999); and Except for OneObscene Brushstroke (2003). Her poetry translations of contemporaryUkrainian poetry have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologiesincluding Leviathan Quarterly, A Hundred Years of Youth: A BilingualAnthology of 20th Century Ukrainian Poetry (Lviv Press, 2000) andFrom Three Worlds: New Writing from the Ukraine (Zephyr Press,1996). Translations of Dzvinia Orlowsky’s poetry into Ukrainian byNatalka Bilotserkivets were published in Vsesvit-Reivew of WorldLiterature 2003. Maya Petrukhina is asenior professor at the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Foundation.She has translated many American and Canadian prose writers, includingAdam Hoschild and Kevin Finley and has been a fellow at Blue MountainCenter and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Ionatan Pirosca was born on May, 20 1958 inBraila, a town in South Eastern Romania, in a Christian family whoraised him in a strong anti-Communist spirit. He has been writing sincechildhood. Between 1984 and 1991, he received various literary awards atRomanian National Festivals of Poetry, but the Communist regimeprevented him from having a literary career. Only after the fall ofCommunism was the first of his four volumes of poetry published in 1994,and in 2005 he received the prestigious Ioan Alexandru Award for Poetry.In 2001 he founded the on-line literary circle Cuvinte la schimb(Words’ Exchange) which currently has more than 200members—young Romanians who love and write poetry. EdvīnsRaups (b. 1962) Poetry editor of the cultural weekly,Kultūras Forums, he has published four volumes of poetry in Latviaand translated many Latin American and Spanish authors. First publishedin 1986, his awards include the Klāvs Elsbergs First Book Award (1991)and the Rainis and Aspazija Foundation Prize (1995), the FortechLiterature Award (1998) and the “Preses nams” Award for hisfourth collection, Uzvāri man kaut ko pārejošu(Cook Up Something Transitory for Me). His poetry is widelytranslated. His birth name is Edvīns Struka. Len Roberts is the translator of two full-length volumes and threechapbooks of Sándor Csoóri’s poetry, as well as the author ofnine books of his own poetry. His next book of poems, TheDisappearing Trick, will be published by the University of Illinoisin 2006. He has received a fellowship from the John Simon GuggenheimFoundation, two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and agrant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for his translationwork. His fourth book of poems, Black Wings, was selected forthe National Poetry Series. His poems and translations have appeared inThe American Poetry Review, Poetry, Paris Review,and The Hudson Review, among others. His work has also beenselected for Best American Poetry and the Pushcart Prize. Jānis Rokpelnis(b. 1945) Poet, essayist and script writer. First published in 1968, hehas subsequently won the Baltic Assembly Literary Prize (2000) and theAleksandars Čaks Award (2001). His work has been translated intomore than 20 languages, and he translates primarily from Russian.Formerly a Senior Research Associate at the Riga Museum of Art, he hasbeen an editor of several periodicals, including Karogs. Currentlyhe is writing a biography of Knuts Skujenieks. Māra Rozītis (b. 1952) Born inAustralia and currently living in Stockholm, she is an actress, theaterdirector, playwright. She translates a number of Latvian poets intoEnglish, including Kronbergs and Belševica. Māris Salējs (b. 1971) A poet, critic andtranslator, primarily from Polish, Ukrainian and Russian, he was firstpublished in 1994. His awards include the Anna Dagda Award (2001) forhis second volume of poetry. An editor at Luna, a literaryjournal, and co-editor for the Latvian feature in Howling Dog Pressinternet journal, Omega, he is a librarian at the Academy ofCulture in Riga. His birth name is Marians Rižijs. Luci Shaw is a poet, essayist, teacher and retreat leader. Born inEngland in 1928, she has lived in Australia and Canada, and since 1950in the U. S. Author of a number of prose books and eight volumes ofpoetry, including Writing the River, The Angles of Light,The Green Earth, and Water Lines, she is Writer inResidence at Regent College, Vancouver, Canada. Her most recent book isThe Crime of Living Cautiously (InterVarsity Press). Forthcoming fromEerdmans in 2006 is a volume of her poetry— Accompanied byAngels: Poems of the Incarnation, from WordFarm a book of newpoems— What the Light Was Like, and from Paraclete Press anillustrated children’s book, The Genesis of It All. Musicalsettings for many of her poems have been composed by Knut Nystedt, AliceParker, Frederick Frahm and Allen Cline. She lives in Bellingham, WA,with her husband John Hoyte. Luci’s website is www.lucishaw.com. Knuts Skujenieks (b. 1936) A poet andtranslator, he is considered one of the finest Latvian poets. In 1962 inSoviet-Latvia, he was sentenced to seven years in a hard labor camp inMordova, Russia for high treason, a charge resulting from meetings withother young dissident intellectuals. Although he began writing poetry asearly as the 1950s, his books did not appear until 1978 and poemswritten in the labor camp were published in the 1990s, after Latvianindependence. His eight-volume collected works is published by NordikPublishers. He translates from many languages, including the folksongsof most European countries. Among his numerous awards are the TomasTranstromer Prize (Sweden, 1998), the Order of the Three Stars (Latvia,1995) and for his translations, Commander of the Catholic Order ofIsabel (Spain, 1994) and the Gedimino Order (Lithuania, 2001). Teofil StanciuBorn in 1978 in Oradea (North West Romania), TeofilStanciu graduated in 2003 from the University of Oradea with a doubledegree in Romanian Language and Literature/ Theology. He has taught forone year and his work has appeared in two anthologies. In 2004 hereceived a poetry prize at the “Lucian Blaga” InternationalFestival. LucijaStupica (19.5.1971) lives in Ljubljana, capital ofSlovenia, writes poetry, articles about architecture and design, andworks as interior designer. She has published her poems in all majorSlovenian literary magazines (Literatura, Nova revija,Sodobnost). Her first book of poetry Celo na soncu(Cello in the Sun) was published by the Beletrina, Studentpublishing house, in 2001. It won the award of the 17th Slovenian BookFair for the best first book and the Zlata ptica (Golden Bird) award forthe best artistic achievement. Stupica’s new book of poetryVetrolov was published in May 2004. A collection of the poemsfrom both books will be published at Meandar Publishing house, Zagreb,Croatia in 2005. Her poetry is included in the anthology TenSlovenian Poets of the Nineties. She is a member of PEN and SloveneWriters’ Association.Stupica participated in the festival Days of Poetry and Wine in Medana,the International festival of Poetry in Cartagena de Indias (2001), theInternational Literary Gathering Valenica (2002) and Goranovoprolječe in Croatia (2003 and 2004). She participated in theInternational Poetry Festival in Gotland, Sweden and was a scholar atthe Baltic Centre for Writers and Translators in 2004. She was a memberof City of Poets, which was organized for Dublin Writers Festival, June2004. Some of her poems have been translated into English, German,Swedish, Finnish, Polish, Italian, Croatian and Spanish, and she hasread at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Mária Szende teaches English for Specific Purposes, Cross-CulturalManagement and Translation Techniques at the School of Business andEconomics, University of Pécs. She has co-translated andco-published with Len Roberts more than a hundred of SándorKanyádi’s poems into English. J.C.Todd‘s poems and translations have appeared in theanthology Shade 2004, and in The Paris Review, APR,RUNES, Crab Orchard Review and other journals as well ason-line in Verse Daily. Pine Press published her chapbooks:Nightshade (1995) and Entering Pisces (1985).Awards include a fellowship in poetry from the Pennsylvania Council onthe Arts, two awards from The Leeway Foundation, a Virginia Center forthe Creative Arts international artist exchange fellowship to theSchloss Wiepersdorf colony in Germany and a scholarship to the BalticCenter for Writers and Translators in Sweden.She has previously edited a feature on contemporary Lithuanian poetryfor TDB and was guest poetry editor for the Summer 2005 issue ofThe Bucks Country Review.A lecturer in Creative Writing at Bryn Mawr College in the spring of2006, she has an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren WilsonCollege. Kārlis Vērdiņš (b. 1979)Poet, critic and translator. He has published translations of WilliamCarlos Williams, H. D., Virginia Woolf and T. S. Eliot. His twocollections of poetry are Ledlauzi (Icebreakers) (2001)and Biezpiens ar krejumu (Cottage Cheese with Cream)(2004). Lászlo Vertes, who was a student of Len Roberts (when Roberts was aFulbright Scholar at the University of Pecs in 1988), is a professionaltranslator in English, German, Hungarian and French for the EuropeanUnion. He and Len Roberts have translated about two hundred ofSándor Csoóri’s poems in the past seventeen years. Jeanne MurrayWalker‘s most recent book of poetry is A Deed To theLight, available from The University ofIllinois Press. For Jeanne’s website, go to: www.english.udel.edu/jwalker/ MāraZālīte (b. 1952) Born in Siberia where herparents had been deported by the Soviets, she returned to Latvia in1956. A poet, essayist, playwright, and librettist for opera and rockmusicals, she has been editor-in-chief of Karogs and was thedirector of the National Language Commission in Latvia. She is presentlypresident of the copyright agency AKKA/LAA. Her rock operaLacplesis (Bearslayer) (1988) was one of the mobilizingforces in the “Singing Rebellion” that led to Latvia’s renewedindependence. Her awards include The Order of Three Stars (1995), theMayakovsky Award (1982), the Aspazija Award (1992) and the Herder Award(Germany, 1993). Sun Stroke in the Dark, Margita Gailitis’English translation of Zālīte’s selected poems, was recentlypublished by Atena (2005). IneseZandere (b. 1958) Poet, children’s author and theeditor of the monthly magazine, Rigas Laiks. Her 3 volumes ofpoetry include Melnās čūskas maiznica (TheBlack Snake’s Bakery) which collects her poems from the past fifteenyears; it received the Latvian Poetry Prize (2003). ImantsZiedonis (b. 1933) A prolific poet, his poetry iswidely translated; Flowers of Ice, translated by Barry Callaghan,was published in Canada. He has published almosttwenty volumes of poetry in Latvia. A formative thinker on Latvianculture, he writes non-fiction about rural Latvian life and culture aswell as tales for children for which he received the Hans ChristianAnderson Award (Denmark). Among his many awards is The Order of theThree Stars (1995). A deputy in the Latvian Parliament in the 1990s, hehas held numerous significant cultural positions. Pēteris Zirnītis (b. 1944; d. 2001)Poet, publisher, former Director of the Latvian Museum of Literature andArt History and Vice President of Latvian PEN. He has published sevenvolumes of poetry. As founding publisher of Nordik, he has focused onpublishing translations of poetry.