bio

Zaharia Stancu (1902 – 1974) is a celebrated Romanian writer. His novels—Barefoot, The Gypsy Tribe, Crazy Forest, and The Gamble with Death—have been translated into many languages. His poetry, which he wrote all his literary life, gained its greatest acclaim in his later years, and is distinguished by the simple beauty of its diction and its focus on human mortality and aspirations. Stancu’s novels and poems, like those of Thomas Hardy, are complementary parts of an arresting literary vision.

Dona Roşu, a Romanian-born poet, essayist, journalist, and translator, lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Deborah Ann Percy, who lives in Kalamazoo and South Haven, MI, earned the MFA in Creative Writing at Western Michigan University. Her chapbook of short fiction, Cool Front, appeared in 2010 from March Street Press, and a full-length collection, Invisible Traffic, is forthcoming in Fall 2014 from One Wet Shoe Press. Her plays, and those written in collaboration with her husband, Arnold Johnston, have won awards, publication, and production nationwide.

Arnold Johnston lives in Kalamazoo and South Haven, MI. Cofounder of Western Michigan University’s creative writing program and founder of its playwriting program, he taught in the WMU Department of English for many years and served for ten years as its chair. His plays, and others written in collaboration with his wife, Deborah Ann Percy, have won awards, production, and publication across the country. His poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and translations have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies.

Georg Trakl (1887 – 1914) was born in Salzburg, Austria, and seems to have been suicidal in childhood. As an extremely young child, he threw himself first in front of a galloping horse and then in front of a train. When both of those suicide attempts failed, he tried drowning himself in a lake and was rescued only when someone noticed his hat floating away. His adolescence and adulthood were marked by bouts of serious mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse, a supposed incestuous relationship with his sister, and near-constant failure.

Jay Hopler’s poetry, essays, and translations have appeared most recently, or are forthcoming, in Ezra: An Online Journal of Translation, Interim, Plume, and The Literary Review. Green Squall, his first book of poetry, won the 2005 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. His most recent book is Before the Door of God: An Anthology of Devotional Poetry (edited with Kimberly Johnson, Yale University Press, 2013). The recipient of numerous honors including fellowships and awards from the Great Lakes Colleges Association, the Lannan Foundation, the Mrs.

Tautvyda Marcinkevičiūtė (b. 1954) is a native of Kaunas, Lithuania, with a degree from the Kaunas campus of Vilnius University. She was the 2013 Poezijos Pavasaris [Poetry Spring] Laureate, which is Lithuania’s equivalent of the US Poet Laureate position. She has published more than a dozen collections of her poetry and has been honored with the Zigmas Gelė prize, the Moteris prize, the Kauno Diena award, and several grants from the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture.

Rima Krasauskytė grew up in Klaipeda, Lithuania. She earned a B.A. in English Philology from Vilnius Pedagogical University (now called “Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences”) and an MA in English from Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana. Her co-translations from Lithuanian, with Julie Kane, of poems by Tautvyda Marcinkevičiūtė appeared in The Drunken Boat. She has taught English at the Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences and at the Military Academy of Vilnius.

Victor Hugo (1802 – 1885) is revered as a great Romantic poet and political activist in his native France, but he is better known in the US for his novels, including Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The former was brought to stage as musical in London in 1985 and ran on Broadway from 1987 to 2003; the 2012 film adaptation won several Golden Globes and Oscars.

Julie Kane, the 2011 – 2013 Louisiana Poet Laureate, is a Professor of English at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana. Her most recent poetry collection is Paper Bullets (White Violet Press, 2014). Her translations from French and co-translations from Lithuanian have appeared in Blue Lyra Review, The Drunken Boat, Louisiana English Journal, Nimrod, and Druskininkai Poetic Fall 2005. She also authored the essay “Francophone Poets of the U.S.” in The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics.