- About the Contributors
Chester Aaron served in World War II, after which he attended UCLA, University of California, Berkeley, and San Francisco State. He later joined the faculty of Saint Mary’s College, retiring in 1997. He is the author of novels, stories, and memoirs. His most recent books are a novel, About Them (2011), and a short-story collection, Symptoms of Terminal Passion (2006). Aaron is also known worldwide as an expert on garlic, growing more than fifty varieties on his farm in Sonoma County.
Alai was born in an ethnic-minority region in Sichuan Province, China. His mother is Tibetan, and his father is from the Hui nationality. His first collection of short stories was published in 1989, and his first volume of poetry in 1990. Red Poppies (Chen’ai luoding), his debut novel, appeared in 1998 and became the first work by a Tibetan author to win the Mao Dun Literature Prize. The novel was translated into English by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin as Red Poppies: A Novel of Tibet (2003). Alai’s latest book in English is Tibetan Soul: Stories (2012).
Nick Bozanic graduated from Columbia University and the University of London. For nearly twenty years, he taught creative writing at Interlochen Center for the Arts, in northern Michigan. He has taught classics at Florida State University and directed the writing program at the New Orleans Center for the Arts. He has published two chapbooks of poetry and two full-length collections, The Long Drive Home (winner of the Anhinga Prize for Poetry in 1989) and This Once: Poems 1976–1996. He is dean of faculty at Ashley Hall, in Charleston, South Carolina.
Chen Zeping is a professor of linguistics at Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, China. For more than ten years, he has collaborated with Karen Gernant, professor emerita of Chinese history at Southern Oregon University, on translations of contemporary Chinese fiction into English. Their most recent co-translated books include Vertical Motion, by Can Xue (2011); Ballad of the Himalayas: Stories of Tibet, by Ma Yuan (2011); and Eleven Contemporary Chinese Writers (2010).
Sur Das is the legendary blind singer of medieval India who is said to have lived during the sixteenth century.
W. S . Di Piero is the author of many books of poetry, translation, and essays on culture, art, and personal experience. His latest book of poems is Nitro Nights (2011); his latest book of essays is When Can I See You Again? (2011). [End Page 158]
Brian Doyle is the author of ten books: five collections of essays, two nonfiction books, two collections of “proems,” and a novel. His essays have appeared in Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Orion, and elsewhere and have been reprinted in Best American Essays, Best American Science & Nature Writing, and Best American Spiritual Writing. His honors include an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Portland, Oregon, where he edits Portland Magazine.
Thomas Farber is the author of many works of fiction, literary nonfiction, and the epigrammatic. He has been awarded Guggenheim, National Endowment, Rockefeller, Fulbright, and Dorothea Lange–Paul Taylor fellowships. A former distinguished visiting writer at the University of Hawai‘i, he is currently senior lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley. He is publisher and editor-in-chief of El León Literary Arts.
Mark Fried has translated twelve books of fiction and nonfiction from Latin American and Spanish authors, six of them by Eduardo Galeano, of Uruguay. He is the editor of From Poverty to Power: How Active Citizens and Effective States Can Change the World, by Duncan Green (2008), and writes regularly on policy issues. He lives in Ottawa, where he works for Oxfam.
Gene Frumkin published sixteen books of poetry before his death in 2007. The most recent is The Curvature of the Earth, co-authored with Alvaro Cardona-Hine. In addition to co-editing several literary magazines, Frumkin co-edited the anthology The Indian Rio Grande: Recent Poems from Three Cultures (2007). He taught for three decades at the University of New Mexico.
Eduardo Galeano is best known for his works Memoria del Fuego (Memory of Fire Trilogy, 1986) and Las...