Carolyn Forché and Ilya Kaminsky

Carolyn Forché is an American poet, translator, and memoirist. Her books of poetry are Blue Hour, The Angel of History, The Country Between Us, Gathering the Tribes, and In the Lateness of the World. Her memoir, What You Have Heard Is True, was published by Penguin Press in 2019. In 2013, Forché received the Academy of American Poets Fellowship given for distinguished poetic achievement. In 2017, she became one of the first two poets to receive the Windham-Campbell Prize. She is a University Professor at Georgetown University. She lives in Maryland with her husband, photographer Harry Mattison.

Ilya Kaminsky is the author of the acclaimed poetry collection Deaf Republic, which was called a work of “profound imagination” by The New Yorker and was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award in Poetry. He is also the author of Dancing In Odessa and Musica Humana. His poems have been translated into numerous languages and his books have been published in Turkey, Holland, Russia, France, Mexico, Macedonia, Romania, Spain, and China. Kaminsky lost most of his hearing at age four after a misdiagnosis of mumps as a cold. In the late 1990s, Kaminsky co-founded Poets For Peace, an organization that sponsors poetry readings in the US and abroad. He currently holds the Bourne Chair in Poetry and is Director of Poetry@Tech at Georgia Tech.