Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odesa, Ukraine in 1977, and arrived to the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government. He is the author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa and co-editor and co-translator of many other books, including Ecco Anthology of International Poetry, In the Hour of War: Poems from Ukraine, and Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva. 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 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.
Deborah Landau is the author of five books of poetry: Skeletons; Soft Targets, winner of The Believer Book Award; The Uses of the Body; The Last Usable Hour; and Orchidelirium. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, American Poetry Review, The New York Times, and The Best American Poetry, and she was a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow. She is a Professor and Director of the Creative Writing Program at New York University and lives in Brooklyn with her family.