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Bill Zavatsky has published translations of Robert Desnos in The Sienese Shredder, in the Random House Book of Twentieth-century French Poetry, and in Essential Poems and Writings of Robert Desnos. His translation of Valery Larbaud’s The Poems of A. O. Barnabooth (with Ron Padgett) was reissued in a revised edition this year. His translation of Earthlight: Poems by André Breton (with Zack Rogow) won the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize. His own poetry appears in the anthologies The Face of Poetry, Up Late, and Present Tense. Where X Marks the Spot, his latest collection of poetry, came out in 2006 from Hanging Loose Press. He has written poems as liner notes for jazz pianists Bill Evans and Marc Copland, most recently Copland’s Voices, with Gary Peacock and Paul Motian, and Night Whispers, with Drew Gress and Bill Stewart. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry for 2008-2009. Bill teaches English at the Trinity School in Manhattan.

Ron Padgett’s recent books include How to Be Perfect (poems), You Never Know (poems), If I Were You (collaborative works), and two memoirs, Oklahoma Tough: My Father, King of the Tulsa Bootleggers and Joe: A Memoir of Joe Brainard. Padgett is also the editor of The Handbook of Poetic Forms as well as the translator of Blaise Cendrars’ Complete Poems and Guillaime Apollinaire’s Poet Assassinated. He has collaborated with artists such as Jim Dine, Alex Katz, George Schneeman, and Joe Brainard. Padgett has received Fulbright, NEA, Guggenheim, and Civitella Ranieri grants and fellowships, and was named Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government. Recently he was elected Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. His translation (with Bill Zavatsky) of Valery Larbaud’s Poems of A. O. Barnabooth was published in 2007 by Black Window Books. For more information, go to www.ronpadgett.com.