In Memorium

Anna Maria Ortese
1914-1998

Anna Maria Ortese was born in Naples. Her first book, a collection of stories published in 1937, was acclaimed by the writer Massimo Bontempielli as the work of a major new “magical realist.” She wrote more than a dozen volumes of stories, novels, and essays, and was the recipient of Italian literary prizes, among them Strega, the Premio Viareggio, and the Fiuggi. Although for fifty years her writing reached relatively small audiences, her most recent works have appeared on the Italian bestseller lists. In 1986, her novel, THE IGUANA, appeared in an English translation by Henry Martin, published by McPherson & Company (www.mcphersonco.com), who also publish two volumes of Ortese's stories under the title A MUSIC BEHIND A WALL,. In England, her fantastical novel THE LAMENT OF THE LINNET, tr. Patrick Creigh, is published by The Harvill Press. A story,  The Great Street appeared in the inaugural issue of Archipelago.

Moshe Benarroch  translated the poems in this issue from the Hebrew. He was born in 1959 in Tetuan, “the northernmost city of Morocco and the Islamic world, facing Gibraltar; this is also the closest place to Spain in which Jewish Sepharadim settled after they were chased from Spain in 1492.” In 1972, his parents emigrated to Israel. He has published two books: THE LITANY OF THE IMMIGRANT (poetry, 1994), and THE COMING BOOK (prose, 1997). He has had numerous publications in Israeli and international magazines. His works have appeared in Spanish, French and English; many can be found on the internet in Visions; Poetry Magazine; Moonshade, and in Poems from the Planet Earth.

He has translated into Hebrew from the French, Spanish and English, works by Tahar ben Jelloun, Charles Bukowski, Borges, García Márquez, Hal Sirowitz, Claude Vigée, André Chouraqui, Benard Chouraqui, Vicente Huidobro, César Vallejo, and many others. From 1981 to 1987 he edited the literary review Marhot; he also writes reviews for the online magazine Fame. He is married to Danielle and they have three children. He lives in Jerusalem.

Heather Burns  was born in Gunnison, Colorado in 1965. She received an MFA from the University of Virginia where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow. Her poems have appeared in Antietam, The Blue Moon Review, The English Journal, Nimrod, Southern Poetry Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review. She has poems forthcoming in The New Virginia Review and The Hollins Critic. She works in the Fine Arts Library at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, and is a founding director of a community writing center where she teaches poetry to adults and children.

Edith Grossman has translated some of the finest works by major contemporary Spanish-language authors, including García Márquez (NEWS OF A KIDNAPPING, Knopf, 1997), Vargas Llosa (THE NOTEBOOKS OF DON RIGOBERTO, Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1998), Mayra Montero (IN THE PALM OF DARKNESS, HC, 1997), Augusto Monterroso (COMPLETE WORKS AND OTHER STORIES, University of Texas, 1995), Julián Ríos (LOVES THAT BIND, Knopf, 1998), and the anti-poet Nicanor Parra. She is working now on Mayra Montero's new novel, to be published by HarperCollins in 1999.

Victoria Slavuski was born in Buenos Aires. She is a resident of the USA and has lived in New York and Paris. A journalist specializing in cultural issues and the arts, she has contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers. She is also a translator for United Nations organizations. Her novel MÚSICA PARA OLVIDAR UNA ISLA, set on Robinson Crusoe´s island and in New York, was published in 1993 by Planeta, Argentina. At present she lives in Vienna and is working on a novel set in that city.

V. Digitalis, a book reviewer and an acquisitions editor at a southern press, uses the regular horticulture column “In the Garden” as a showcase for certain misanthropic views and periodic litanies of complaint.

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