Forrest Gander, born in the Mojave Desert, lives in California. A translator/writer with degrees in geology and literature, he’s received the Pulitzer Prize and Best Translated Book Award. Gander’s has been a signal voice for environmental poetics. His book Twice Alive focuses on human and ecological intimacies. In October 2024, New Directions will bring out his long poem on the desert, Mojave Ghost: a Novel-Poem.
Brenda Shaughnessy is the author of seven poetry collections, including Tanya (Knopf), The Octopus Museum (Knopf), and Liquid Flesh: New and Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, UK). Recipient of a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and the James Laughlin Award, she is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Rutgers University-Newark. She lives in West Orange, New Jersey.