Antonio SagredoAntonio Sagredo was born 1945 in Brindisi and grew up in Leece, two towns in the peninsula of Salento, the so-called heel of the boot of Southern Italy. The region is suffused with the history of invasions and overlays of Western and Eastern cultures He was raised as a Catholic, amid altars and rosaries, hearing tales of decapitated saints, burned heretics and mass executions under the Ottoman Turks. At age 23 he moved to Rome, worked for a degree at the university and studied Slavic languages and literatures in Prague. These three influences--the cultural heritage of Salento, the Catholic passion and inquisition, and the poems and novels of Russians, Czechs and other Slavs--infuse his poetry and prose. He has written on Lev Tolstoi and translated Vladimir Mayakovsky.

Translator Sean Mark grew up between London and Milan. Having earned a Master's degree in English from University College London, he is completing a PhD in Comparative Literature in a program shared between the universities of Tübingen, Bergamo and Brown. He edited and translated Adam Vaccaro's SEEDS for Chelsea Editions in 2014 and contributes translations to various journals. He writes poetry in English and Italian. Read More Read Less