Viktor Aleksandrovich Sosnora was born in 1936 in Alupka, Crimea. During World War II, Sosnora was in Leningrad at the beginning of the blockade. His poetic mentor was Nikolai Aseyev, who wrote the foreword to his first book of poetry in 1962. Sosnora has since published six more volumes of poems in Russian: Triptych, 1965; Riders, 1969; Crystal, 1977; Poems, 1977; and Moon Song, 1982. Dinara Georgeoliani was educated in Moscow and Tbilisi, Georgia. She is a linguist, with extensive experience in English/Russian translation and scholarship. She has published, in Russia, numerous articles on the history of American film. She is currently Assistant Professor at Central Washington University where she teaches in the Dept. of Foreign Languages. Mark Halperin teaches in the English Department at Central Washington University. He was a Fulbright lecturer at Moscow State Linguistic University in Russia, and has returned there to serve as an exchange professor at Hertzen University in St. Petersburg. He has published three collections of poetry, including The Measure of Islands (Wesleyan University Press) and Time as Distance (New Issues).
