LIDIJA DIMKOVSKA (Macedonian poet from Slovenia)
&
SEBASTIAN REICHMANN (Romanian poet from Paris)

Lidija Dimkovska was born in 1971 in Skopje. She has lived in Bucharest, where she attained a doctoral degree in Romanian literature, and now lives and works in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Her prize winning debut collection Progenies of the East was published in 1992, and she has since written three more books of poetry (Fire of Letters, Bitten Nails, and Nobel vs. Nobel) and has edited an anthology of young Macedonian poets.

Sebastian Reichmann was born in Romania in 1947. He started publishing poetry since the age of 19, and has since written poetry in the leading literary magazines at the age of 19. Two books of his poems were published before he was forced to leave the country in 1972, after being harshly criticized by the Party daily newspaper for surrealism, cosmopolitism, etc. He moved to Parisin 1973 and soon began writing only in French. Since then he has published five books of poetry. He has also translated Jerome Rothenberg, Philip Lamantia, Ira Cohen and James Brook, among others, into French, as well as Gellu Naum from Romanian.