Kazuko Shiraishi was born in Vancouver, Canada in 1931 and was taken to Japan by her family just prior to World War II. She entered the modernism poetry group VOU led by the poet, Katsue Kitazono in 1948, and published her first collection of poetry in 1951. In the early
Ken Bugul , whose official name is Mariétou Biléoma Mbaye, was born in Ndukumane, Senegal, in 1948. In Wolof, her tribal language, the pseudonym means »nobody wants her«. In Senegal, women who give birth to stillborn babies or children incapable of surviving usually bear this name. As the daughter of
Josef Holub was born in what is now Nyrsko, in the Czech Republic, in 1926. He spent his formative years in the Bohemian Forest. During the Third Reich Holub attended a teacher training college in what was then Prachatitz. He was then conscripted into labour and military service and later
José Eduardo Agualusa was born in Huambo, Angola, in 1960. He studied agriculture and forestry in Lisbon, but as a student he began to write journalistic and literary texts. His début novel »A Conjura« (tr: The Conspiracy) was published in Portugal and Angola in 1989. Since then, he has published
José Emilio Pacheco was born in Mexico City in 1939. He began to write for magazines and newspapers while he was still at school and continued throughout university. His father, a lawyer and notary, advised his shy son to study Law so that he would one day be in a
John Tranter was born in Cooma, Australia, in 1943 and grew up on his parents’ farm on the south coast of New South Wales. In the 1960s he started writing poetry and his work was published in different magazines before his first poetry volume ‘Parallax’ appeared in 1970. From the
James Fenton was born in Lincoln, England, in 1949. He studied Psychology and Philosophy at Oxford. As a student he received the Newdigate Prize for his first poetry collection, ‘Our Western Furniture’, in 1968. A year later he went public with his second poetry volume, ‘Put Thou Thy Tears Into
Inger Christensen was born in Vejle, Denmark in 1935. She initially studied medicine but then trained to be a teacher, and from 1963 to 1964 she worked at the College for Arts in Holbæk. After that she opted for the life of a freelance writer. Although she has also written
born 1946 in Slovakian Rimavská Sobota, she studied Slavik and Romance languages in Zurich, Paris and St. Petersburg. In 1971 she wrote her dissertation on the theme of loneliness in Russian literature and worked as an assistant at the Slavonic Institute of Universität Zürich. Since 1977 she is assistant professor
Hugo Hamilton was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1953. The child of a German mother and an Irish father, Hamilton grew up in Dublin and attended schools where Gaelic, his father’s native language, was spoken exclusively. He spoke German with his mother. As he was forbidden to speak English with
The youngest of five brothers, Homero Aridjis was born in 1940 in the village of Contepec, Michoacán, Mexico, to a Mexican mother and a Greek father. He began writing at the age of 11, after surviving an accident that nearly cost him his life. He won a scholarship from the
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