Notes on Contributors

Faith Adiele studies creative writing at the University of Iowa. Her work has appeared in Ms., Ploughshares, Sage, and numerous anthologies. At the age of twenty-two she was ordained the first African American Buddhist nun in the history of northern Thailand.

Adam Ashforth is a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. "The Soweto Witch Project" is adapted from his forthcoming book Madumo: A Man Bewitched, published by the University of Chicago Press.

Russell Banks is a novelist, the author most recently of Rule of the Bone and Cloudsplitter, a novel about John Brown, as well as a forthcoming book of stories, The Angel on the Roof.

Timothy Brennan is a professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Salman Rushdie and the Third World and At Home in the World: Cosmopolitanism Now. He is the editor of the English translation of Music in Cuba by Alejo Carpentier, forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press.

Alejo Carpentier was an essayist, radio host, journalist, novelist, and sometime government official in Cuba. His novels include Ecué-Yamba-Ó!, The Lost Steps, Explosion in the Cathedral, and The Kingdom of This World. He died in 1980 in Havana.

Nuruddin Farah is the author most recently of Secrets, winner of the 1998 Neustadt Prize for Literature, and is a frequent contributor to Transition. "Citizens of Sorrow" is adapted from his new book Yesterday, Tomorrow, published by Cassell/Continuum.

Paul Gilroy is a visiting professor in sociology and African American studies at Yale University. His books include Ain't No Black in the Union Jack and The Black Atlantic. "Black Fascism" is adapted from his new book Against Race: Imagining Political Culture beyond the Color Line, published by Harvard University Press.

René Lemarchand is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Florida. His numerous books include Political Awakening in the Belgian Congo and Rwanda and Burundi, which received the Herskovitz Award in 1971. He is the editor of The Green and the Black: Qadhafi's Policies in Africa.

Ilan Stavans teaches at Amherst College and edits Hopscotch: A Cultural Review. His books include The Hispanic Condition and The Riddle of Cantinflas. "On Packing My Library" is adapted from his forthcoming memoir, On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language, published by Viking. His essay on Jorge Luis Borges, "Bi(bli)ographies," appeared in Transition 74.

Lyonel Trouillot is the author of poetry, four novels, and numerous short stories in Haitian Creole and French; he teaches literature in Haiti. "Street of Lost Footsteps" is adapted from his novel, Rue des Pas-Perdus, published by Actes Sud. This is his first appearance in English.

Yvonne Vera is the regional director of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo. She is the author of the short story collection Why Don't You Carve Other Animals and the novels Nehanda and Under the Tongue, winner of the 1997 Regional Commonwealth Prize. Her most recent novel, Butterfly Burning, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. She recently edited Opening Spaces: An Anthology of Contemporary African Women's Writing for the Heinemann African Writers Series.

Michela Wrong is a correspondent for the Financial Times of London. Her book about Zaire under Mobutu Sese Seko, In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz, will be published in the fall. Her essay "A Question of Style" appeared in Transition 80.

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