Theo Dorgan, co-editor of AN LEABHAR MÒR / THE GREAT BOOK OF GAELIC, is a poet, as well as a broadcaster, scriptwriter and editor. He is the author of THE ORDINARY HOUSE OF LOVE (1991), ROSA MUNDI (1995) and SAPPHO’S DAUGHTER (1998); editor of IRISH POETRY SINCE KAVANAGH (1997); co-editor of REVISING THE RISING (1991) and, with Gene Lambert, of LEABHAR MÓR na hÈIRANN / THE GREAT BOOK OF IRELAND. He was a former Director of Poetry Ireland / Éigse Éireann. His work has been widely translated and he is a member of Aosdána.
Anant Kumar, a writer in the German language, was born in the North Eastern Indian State of Bihar. He learnt German as a Foreign Language in New Delhi, before he came to Germany in 1991. Between 1991 and 1997, he studied German Literature and Linguistics. He wrote his Masters Thesis on the epic MANAS of Alfred Döblin at the University of Kassel, Germany. Besides regular contributions to literary magazines and periodicals, he is the author of five books of poetry and prose: FREMDE FRAU -- FREMDER MANN (Schweinfurt 1997/ 2000), KASSELER TEXTE (Schweinfurt 1998/ 2000), DIE INDERIN (Schweinfurt 1999/ 2000), ...UND EIN STÜCK FÜR DICH (Ahlhorn 2000), and DIE GALOPPIERENDE KUHHERDE (Schweinfurt 2001/2002). He has received several awards in contemporary German literature and is a member of German Writers Association. The original essay was first published in the trilingual German cultural and political magazine Gazette, Munich. The essay is contending presently for the Heinrich Heine Literary Award, Düsseldorf.
The English translation is by Prof. Dr. Rajendra Prasad Jain (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi), who teaches now in the University of Münster, Germany.
Malcolm Maclean, co-editor of AN LEABHAR MÒR / THE GREAT BOOK OF GAELIC, is a Glasgow Gael who has lived since 1975 in the Western Isles, where he helped raise two lovely daughters. A graduate of Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen and the Open University, his previous incarnations include fisherman, water-diviner, art therapist, painter, cartoonist, book designer and teacher. He helped form Peacock Printmakers (Aberdeen 1974) and An Lanntair art gallery (Stornoway, 1985). He was curator/editor of the touring exhibition/book, AN FHEARANN (From the Land) (1986-1990), co-curator of ‘Calanais’ (1995-97) and various other touring exhibitions. He has been the director of Proiseact nan Eilan /The Gaelic Arts Agency since1987.
Eleanor Ross Taylor was born in 1920 in North Carolina and was married to the fiction writer Peter Taylor. She is the author of five volumes of poems: WILDERNESS OF LADIES (1960); WELCOME EUMENIDES (1972); NEW AND SELECTED POEMS (1983); DAYS GOING / DAYS COMING BACK (1992); and LATE LEISURE (1999). A selection from the latter appeared in Archipelago, Vol. 3, No. 1. In 1998 she received the Shelley Award from the Poetry Society of America and, earlier, was awarded a fellowship by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is the subject of THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER, Essays on the Poetry of Eleanor Ross Taylor, edited by Jean Valentine (Hobart and William Smith College Press). Writers contributing to this festschrift of “bright hommage” include Betty Adcock, Fred Chappell, Ben Cleary, Alfredo Franco, Lorrie Goldensohn, Eric Gudas, James Harms, Richard Howard, Randall Jarrell, Heather Ross Miller, Gregory Orr, Adrienne Rich, Deborah Tall, Henry Taylor, Jean Valentine, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Rosanna Warren, and Alan Williamson.
Peter Turnley has published his photographs in such magazines as Newsweek (contract photographer, 1984-2001), Stern, Paris Match, Geo, LIFE, National Geographic, The London Sunday Times, VSD, Le Figaro, Le Monde, and DoubleTake. The Digital Journalist has published his portfolios of Kosovo; the Gulf War, 1991; and Iraq 2003. He has documented most of the world’s refugee populations; witnessed Nelson Mandela walk out of prison and the end of apartheid in South Africa; chronicled Tiananmen Square, 1989; and was present in New York at “Ground Zero” on Sept, 11, 2001. He has received the Overseas Press Club Award for Best Photographic Reporting from Abroad, and awards and citations from World Press Photo and Pictures of the Year (University of Missouri). He has published four books: MOMENTS OF REVOLUTION, BEIJING SPRING, IN TIMES OF WAR AND PEACE, and PARISIANS. Peter Turnley is a graduate of the University of Michigan, the Sorbonne and the Institut d’Études Politiques. He was a Neiman Fellow in 2000-2001, has taught at the Santa Fe, Maine, and Eddie Adams Workshops and was a Teaching Fellow for Robert Coles at Harvard. He was assistant to the French photographer Robert Doisneau in the late 1970s. He continues to work as a documentary photojournalist and is a special contributor to the Denver Post. His photographic archive is more than 25,000 images (some are here and here). At present, he lives in New York and Paris. His most recent work is represented by Corbis.
Patricia Sarrafian Ward was born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon, and came to the United States when she was eighteen. She holds a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and an M.F.A. from the University of Michigan, where she received Hopwood Awards in Novel and Short Fiction. She was the 2002 winner of the RAWI (Radius of Arab-American Writers) writing contest, and has received a Henfield Award, a Bread Loaf Scholarship, and Fellowships at Vermont Studio Center and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her writing has appeared in several journals including The Literary Review, Epoch Magazine, Ms. Magazine, and the Post-Gibran Anthology of Arab-American Writers. THE BULLET COLLECTION is her first novel. She currently lives on Sandy Hook Bay in New Jersey.
News of Our Contributors
UNFINISHED IRELAND: ESSAYS ON HUBERT BUTLER, edited by Chris Agee, has been published by Irish Pages in association with the Butler Society. Hubert Butler, the Anglo-Irish author whose centenary was observed in October 2000, in Kilkenny, Ireland, his family home, was the author of four late-published volumes of noteworthy essays on subjects as close as his own neighborhood, as far-ranging as Russia and the Balkans, about which he wrote essays of international importance. His “The Artukovitch File” also appeared in Archipelago, Vol. 1, No. 2, with an appreciation by Richard Jones. In Vol. 5, No. 1 we offered his remarkable “The Sub-Prefect Should Have Held His Tongue”, followed by two essays by Chris Agee: “The Balkan Butler”, and “The Stepinac File”. Inquiries concerning UNFINISHED IRELAND and the excellent quarterly journal Irish Pages may be sent to Chris Agee, Irish Pages, The Linen Hall Library, 17 Donegall Square, Belfast BT1 5GB, Northern Ireland.
Edith Grossman is the translator of DON QUIXOTE, by Miguel Cervantes, to be released in October by ECCO, an imprint of HarperCollins. The First Chapter (in an earlier version) appeared in Archipelago, Vol. 6, No. 2. Also this autumn, her translation of LIVING TO TELL THE TALE, by Gabriel García Marquez, the first of a projected three volumes of memoirs, will be published by Knopf. Edith Grossman is a contributing editor of this journal. Her translation from the Spanish of “Music to Forget an Island By,” by Victoria Slavuski, appeared in Vol. 2, No. 1.
David Cooper has recently published two e-books, GLUED TO THE SKY and JFK: LINES OF FIRE (Burlington, VT: PulpBits.com) One of the poems in GLUED TO THE SKY first appeared in Archipelago, Vol. 3, No. 3. David Cooper’s poems and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in The Literary Review, The Massachusetts Review, Passages North, Painted Bride Quarterly, Chelsea, Tampa Review, Confrontation, The Spoon River Poetry Review , Rashi: The New Zealand Jewish Chronicle Literary Supplement, Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, and a number of other publications.