Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) was an Italian poet, philosopher, and author of the epic poem "Divine Comedy," considered one of the greatest works in world literature.
Sophy Hollington is a British artist and illustrator living in rural East Sussex whose main body of work is created using the lengthy relief printmaking process of linocutting. She weaves arcane and folkloric forms in to intricate, symbolically rich compositions which toe the line between feeling like archaic objects and futuristic visions. She is the creator of Autonomic Tarot, a collaboration with writer David Keenan, published by Rough Trade books in 2018.
Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odesa, Ukraine in 1977, and arrived in the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government. He is the author of Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press) and Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press) His work was the finalist for The National Book Award and won The Los Angeles Times Book Award, The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, The National Jewish Book Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, The Whiting Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award, Lannan Fellowship, Academy of American Poets’ Fellowship, NEA Fellowship, Poetry magazine's Levinson Prize, and was also shortlisted for National Book Critics Circle Award, Neustadt International Literature Prize, and T.S. Eliot Prize (UK).
Kristina M. Olson is the author of Courtesy Lost: Dante, Boccaccio and the Literature of History (University of Toronto Press, 2014) and co-editor of Approaches to Teaching Dante's Divine Comedy (Modern Language Association, 2020) and Boccaccio 1313-2013 (Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2015). She is Associate Editor for Digital Dante and serves on the Editorial Boards of Dante Studies and Bibliotheca Dantesca. She served as the President (2020-23), Vice President (2017-20), and Treasurer (2014-17) of the American Boccaccio Association, and Vice President of the Dante Society of America (2016-18).
W.S. Merwin (1927-2019) was Poet Laureate of the United States in 2010-11. He received most of the principal prizes in American poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize (twice), the Bollingen Prize and the Tanning Prize and a Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award. Bloodaxe published his Selected Poems in 2007, prior to which his poetry had been unavailable in Britain for over 35 years. As well as being an internationally renowned poet, W.S. Merwin was the author of many classic translations, including editions of Neruda, Dante, The Song of Roland, The Poem of the Cid, and (from Bloodaxe) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. His latest titles from Bloodaxe are Selected Poems (2007); The Shadow of Sirius (2009), which won him his second Pulitzer Prize; The Moon Before Morning (2014); and Garden Time (2016). All three of his late collections from Bloodaxe are Poetry Book Society Recommendations. Born in New York City, he taught at several universities, and lived on the Pacific island of Maui, tending to his writing and to his garden of rare and endangered palm trees.
