Contributors to the Double Issue
Art by Daiva Kaireviciute
Born in a remote parish of northern woodland Småland in southern Sweden, Per Helge has authored twenty-five books, mostly poetry. Recipient of the 2018 Tranströmer Poetry Prize, Stockholm-based Swedish writer, Eva Runefelt has published twelve books and written about Art and collaborated with painters, composers (libretti), musicians and translators. Swedish poet and literary critic, Arne Johnsson has worked in Lindesberg as a librarian for several years. She has published over a dozen books and lives in a small town, Lindesberg, not far from Stockholm. Agneta Falk Hirschman is a Swedish poet, living in San Francisco, USA. She has travelled a lot in Italy and around the world together with her husband, a distinguished American poet, Jack Hirschman. She has authored several books including Here by Choice, The Long Pale Corridor, It’s not love it’s love and Heart Muscle. Vasa, Finland–born, Carita Nyström belongs to the Swedish-spoken minority in Finland. After years in Helsinki she lives in Korsnäs since 1981. Author of over twenty books, she has also contributed to anthologies and edited a number of books. For last five years, she has co-operated with Wildlife Vasa Nature film festival, making films with schools in the region. Born and educated in Eastern Ukraine, Svetlana Lavochkina (Gitin) is a poet, novelist and translator of Ukrainian and Russian poetry. She was the prize-winner in the Paris Literary Prize 2013 and Tibor and Jones Pageturner Prize London, 2015. Svetlana currently lives in Germany with her husband and two sons. Ingela Strandberg lives in Grimeton, south of Sweden. She has published several poetry collections, the latest being. Att snara en fågel (To trap a bird) and Norstedts, 2018. Swedish poet, Bengt Berg served as a Member of the Swedish Parliament from 2010 to 2014. Since 1990, he has been running the publishing house, Heidruns Förlag, and an Art Café in his home village, Fensbol, in the Province of Värmland. He has won several Swedish Literary prizes, including some from The Swedish Academy. Leading Israeli poet, novelist and essayist, Amir Or has published twelve volumes of poetry, most recent being, Wings. He has been awarded the Prime Minister’s Award for his poetry, the Bernstein Award and the Holon Award; and for his translations of poetry from ancient Greek, he has received an honorary award from the Israeli Ministry of Culture. He lives in Tel Aviv. An outstanding Ukrainian poet, Pavlo Hirnyk is the last representative of the classic Ukrainian poetic tradition. Hirnyk taught Ukrainian at village schools and was Literary Director of Khmelnitsky Puppet Theatre. Odessa based poet, Boris Khersonsky is widely regarded as one of Ukraine’s best Russian-language poets. The National Shevchenko Award Laureate, Dmytro Kremin is one of the most renowned Ukrainian poets. He lives in Mykolaiv. Olena Zadorozhna is a Ukrainian journalist, poet, social activist and winner of several national awards for literature and journalism. Lyuba Yakimchuk is a Ukrainian poet, screenwriter, and journalist. She is the winner of the International Slavic Poetic Award and the international “Coronation of the Word” literary contest and lives in Kiev. Vasyl Holoborodko is a living classic, a National Shevchenko Award winner and the pioneer of blank verse in Ukrainian poetry. His work is strongly influenced by Ukrainian folklore and symbolism. Maria Farazdel (Palitachi), an Award-winning Dominican poet was educated in the United States where she received a PhD at Fordham University. She has authored over a dozen books most noted being, Eleven Spotlight, Infraganti and Bitácora del insomnia. Ana Luisa Martínez is a New York-based Dominican poet. Her work includes Tatuajes and Primavera del Great O. Kary Cerda is a Mexican poet, photographer and editor. Verónica Aranda is a multi-lingual award-winning Spanish poet and translator with an international presence. Aranda has been awarded many notable poetry prizes including Joaquín Benito de Lucas, Antonio Carvajal de Poesía Joven, José Agustín Goytisolo, Arte Joven de la Comunidad de Madrid, Margarita Hierro, Fernando Quiñones, Antonio. In 2016, her collection, The Shell of the Tortoise Poems Written in India & Nepal appeared in Nirala Series. Franky De Varona is an American Cuban poet, narrator and essayist. He has published Solitudes, De Azares, Laberintos y Cenizas Rotas and Las Gaviotas También vuelan en Diciembre. and edits, RACATA. Author of The Language of Parks, a poetry collection, Marisa Russo is a New York-based Argentinean poet and cultural activist. In 2015, she created the cultural movement Turrialba Literariain Costa Rica and coordinated the I Summit de Voces de América Latina in Costa Rica, 2017, and the Festival Internacional Grito de Mujer, Sede Turrialba, Costa Rica, 2018. Currently, she teaches at Hunter College, New York. Delhi-based Indian poet and editor, Medha Singh has published, Ecdysis, a poetry collection. A former Editor-at-Large at Coldnoon, she holds a Masters degree in English Literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Aishwarya Iyer was raised in India and Bahrain, and studied literature at the universities of Mumbai, Jadavpur and Pennsylvania. She teaches at O. P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat. Recipient of the 2018 Charles Wallace Fellowship in Creative Writing at The University of Stirling, Scotland. Arjun Rajendran is the author of several books of poems, most recent being, Your Baby is Starving. He is also the poetry editor of The Bombay Literary Magazine. Author of Anamnesia, Arun Sagar lives and works in Sonipat at Jindal Global University. Guru T Ladakhi was born and lives in Gangtok, Sikkim with his wife Priya Reddy and two daughters Rhea Palmo and Aria Dechen. He has taught in Sikkim University and North East Hill University. His first book of poems is called Monk on a Hill. Linda Ashok is the 2017 Charles Wallace India Fellow in Creative Writing (Poetry) at the University of Chichester, UK. She is the Founder/President of RædLeaf Foundation for Poetry & Allied Arts and sponsors the annual RL Poetry Award. British poet Graham Burchell was the 2012 Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year, a 2013 Hawthornden Fellow and winner of the 2015 National Stanza competition. He has authored several poetry collections, most recent being, Cottage Pi. Author poetry collection, Drift, Shehzar Doja is a Luxembourg based poet with Bangladeshi origins. He also edits, The Luxembourg Review. Hungarian poet, Kinga Fabó’s work has been published in Modern Poetry in Translation, Numéro Cinq and The Original Van Gogh’s Ear. Her latest book, Racun/Poison was published in 2015. Rhiannon Hooson is an award-winning Welsh poet. She studied and later taught at Lancaster University, where she completed a PhD in Poetry. Her first collection, The Other City, was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year. Ian Humphreys lives in West Yorkshire, England. Ian holds an MA in Creative Writing from the Manchester Writing School. In 2017, a selection of his poems was showcased in Ten: Poets of the New Generation (Bloodaxe Books). Agnes Marton is a Hungarian-born poet, writer, librettist, Reviews Editor of The Ofi Press (Mexico), Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (UK). Recent publications include her collection Captain Fly’s Bucket List and an anthology she edited (Estuary: A Confluence of Art and Poetry) won the Saboteur Award. Angela Readman’s poetry has won The Mslexia Poetry Competition, The Essex Prize, and The Charles Causey Prize. She is also a Costa Short Story Award-winning story writer. Nottingham based British poet, Andrew Taylor is a senior lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University and has published most recently a book-length sequence, 15.11.13 – 5.2.14. Maria Taylor is a poet and reviewer of Cypriot heritage and has published several poetry collections, most recent being, Instructions for Making Me. Abigail Ardelle Zammit is from the island of Malta. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing (Lancaster) and has published two poetry collections, Voices from the Land of Trees and Portrait of a Woman with Sea Urchin. Maaz Bin Bilal is Assistant Professor for Literary Studies at Jindal School of Liberal Arts and Humanities at O. P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, India. He earned his PhD in English from the Queen’s University of Belfast and writes poetry in English and translates from Urdu and Hindi. Winner of the Villa Sarkia Residency, Finland, 2018, Manjiri Indurkar is a poet-writer from the small central-Indian town of Jabalpur. She is one of the founders and editors of the literary magazine AntiSerious. Author of two full-length books of poems in English and Bangla, Nandini Dhar is the co-founder and co-editor of the independent micro-press Aainanagar, which she manages with dancer, illustrator and writer Madhushree Basu. Author of Blind Screens, Ranjani Murali lives and teaches in suburban Chicago. She has an MFA in Poetry from George Mason University and was the recipient of the 2014 Srinivas Rayaprol Prize. The 2016 Norman Mailer Poetry Fellow, Rohan Chhetri is the author of Slow Startle (Winner of the ‘Emerging Poets Prize 2015’) and a forthcoming chapbook of poems, Jurassic Desire (Winner of ‘Per Diem Poetry Prize 2017’). A 2016 Pushcart Prize Nominee, a bilingual, Asian-American writer, Sophia Naz is Poetry Editor and columnist at The Sunflower Collective as well as the founder of Rekhti, a site dedicated to avant-garde Urdu poetry. Delhi based poet and translator, Souradeep Roy was shortlisted for the Mary Ballard Poetry Chapbook Prize, and the Raedleaf Poetry Prize, and longlisted for the Toto Funds the Arts Award in Creative Writing. Tashi Chophel is a poet based in Sikkim. His works have appeared in the Cordite Poetry Review, India International Centre Quarterly, The Sentinel, Weekend Review, Sikkim Now, Nagaland Page, Catscanned, Sikkim Midweek among others. Author of a poetry collection, Visceral Metropolis, Uttaran Das Gupta ’s poems and articles have appeared or are forthcoming in New England Review of Books, CITY, Fulcrum, Magnapoets, Indian Literature. He is a journalist at Business Standard, New Delhi. An emerging author, Devanshu Mishra, lives in Delhi. A third-generation Iranian immigrant, Sharon Irani is the assistant editor of Helter Skelter Magazine Born to Syrian Christian parents, Anna Sujatha Mathai is a well known Indian English poet. Mother’s Veena and other Poems is her most recent book. North Eastern India-based poet, Robin Singh Ngangom writes in English and Meiteilon. His books of poetry include Words and the Silence, Time’s Crossroads and The Desire of Roots. He was conferred with the Katha Award for Translation in 1999. Pankaj Singh authored three books of poetry in Hindi, and won three major awards for writing, among other regional accolades. Lithuanian poet Laurynas Katkus’ works have been translated into German, English, and other languages. He is one of the well-known poets of his generation. Giedre Kazlauskaite is the editor of a prestigious literary journal North Athens (Siaures Atenai). She received the literary award of the Vilnius Book Fair (winter of 2015). Vytautas Stankus is a young Lithuanian poet who has published one collection of poems. Simonas Bernotas’s poetry has been influenced by rap, modern cinema, etc. Simonas is the child of the independent, post-Soviet Lithuania. Vilnius-based Lithuanian poet, Marius Burokas is author of three poetry collections and translator of American and English poetry (Allen Ginsberg, Ted Hughes, Charles Simic, W. C. Williams, etc.) Laurynas Katkus studied Lithuanian and Comparative literature in Vilnius, Leipzig, and Berlin and earned a PhD on exile in modern poetry. He published three books of poetry and was a fellow of Akademie Schloss Solitude, and Junge Akademie by Berlin Academy of Arts. New York-based poet, psychologist and translator, Anna Halberstadt has published six books, including, Vilnius Diary, Green in a Landscape with Ashes and Gloomy Sun, 2017, and two books of translations: Selected by Eileen Myles and Nocturnal Fire by Edward Hirsch, in Russian. Her work has appeared in over 60 literary journals and anthologies, she was a finalist of the 2013 Mudfish poetry contest. Distinguished American Indian poet, Ravi Shankar published twelve books and chapbooks including The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks (University of Arkansas Press). He founded Drunken Boat, has appeared on NPR, BBC, PBS, and in The New York Times and The Paris Review. The title of his memoir-in-progress is Correctional. Indian Poet Mandira Ghosh has authored twelve books including, Aroma, New Sun, Song in a City, The Cosmic Dance of Shiva, Folk Music of the Himalayas, Impact of Famine on Bengali Literature, Benares the Sacred City in Verses and Hymns. She is associated with The Poetry Society of India. Claudia Routon’s work appears in numerous literary journals, including a book of poetry and music, La cité des dames (Capellas de Ministrers). She teaches Spanish literature and language at the University of North Dakota. Kiran Devendra has taught History at Punjabi University, Patiala and worked with the legendary Indian freedom fighter, Aruna Asaf Ali. She has worked for the National Curriculum Framework 2005-History Curriculum. She lives in New Delhi. Jack Tar is a poet and writer who chronicles environmental movements, the ageing Beat Poets, and life on the water. Jack is a fisherman, a sailor, and an environmentalist. Vijay Anand Gurung is a Kathmandu-based Nepali author and has published Journalism and Journeys: A book of Essays Trained originally as a research biochemist, Chris Southgate has taught theology at University of Exeter, UK since 1993. His recent books include Theology in a Suffering World: Glory and Longing (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and two poetry collections, Rain Falling by the River and Chasing the Raven. UK based Indian poet Azad Sharma has published a poetry collection, Against Frame. A Brooklyn-based poet Laura Cook holds an M.A. in English from Middlebury College and has taught English in the U.S and Taiwan. Born in Bombay, India, Rochelle Almeida teaches at the Liberal Studies Program at NYU and has been awarded a Fulbright-Nehru Research Fellowship for Academic and Professional Excellence to Bombay, India, for the academic year 2018-19. Bhuwan Thapaliya is a Nepalese poet and has published two books, most recent being, Safa Tempo and Other Poems. Seth Michelson is an American poet, translator and professor of Poetry. He has won several awards including the poetry category of the International Book Awards, an NEA and an Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award. A 2016 recipient of a Maryland Arts Council Individual Artist award, Barrett Warner is the author of Why Is It So Hard to Kill You? and My Friend Ken Harvey. He is also a recent winner of the Salamander fiction Prize, the Tucson Book Festival essay prize, and several poetry awards. He now lives in South Carolina. He edits Free State Review. Stephanie Emily Dickinson raised on an Iowa farm now lives in New York City. Her novel Half Girl and novella Lust Series are published by Spuyten Duyvil. Other works include Corn Goddess, Road of Five Churches, and Port Authority Orchids. She and her partner Rob Cook publish Skidrow Penthouse.
