Mary Jo Bang is the author of eight books of poems—including Louise in Love (Grove), A Doll for Throwing, and Elegy (both Graywolf), which received the National Book Critics Circle Award—and translations of Dante’s Inferno, with illustrations by Henrik Drescher, and Purgatorio (both Graywolf), as well as Matthias Göritz’ Colonies of Paradise (TriQuarterly Books). She teaches creative writing at Washington University in St. Louis.

Matthias Göritz is the author of three volumes of poetry—Loops (2001), Pools (2006), and Tools (2012)—and two novels: The Short Dream of Jakob Voss (2005, winner of the Hamburg Literature Prize, Radio Bavaria Prize, and Mara Cassens Prize) and Dreamers and Sinners (2013). He is the William Gass Fellow at Washington University in St. Louis.