Can Xue is the pseudonym of celebrated experimental writer Deng Xiaohua, born in 1953 in the city of Changsha. She is the author of Vertical Motion, Frontier, Barefoot Doctor, and Five Spice Street, among other books.
Karen Gernant is a professor emerita of Chinese history.
Chen Zeping was a professor emeritus of Chinese linguistics.
Kristín Ómarsdóttir has published books of poetry, short stories, and novels. She received Griíman, the Icelandic playwright award, in 2005 for her play Tell Me Everything.
Lytton Smith is a poet and translator, and a founding member of Blind Tiger Poetry. His book, The All-Purpose Magical Tent was published by Nightboat. His poems and reviews have appeared in such publications as The Atlantic, The Believer, and Boston Review.
Sofia Samatar is the author of the novels A Stranger in Olondria and The Winged Histories, the short story collection, Tender, and Monster Portraits, a collaboration with her brother, the artist Del Samatar. She is the recipient of the William L. Crawford Award, the Astounding Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the World Fantasy Award. She teaches Arabic literature, African literature, and speculative fiction at James Madison University.
Lydia Davis: Lydia Davis, a 2003 MacArthur Fellow, is the author, most recently, of Collected Stories (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009). She is also the latest translator of Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust (Viking Penguin, 2002), and the forthcoming Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (Viking Penguin, 2010). She lives in rural upstate New York, across the road from the cows she has studied with such attention, and teaches at SUNY Albany.