ELISA BIAGINI (Florence, Italy, 1970), after having received her Ph.D. from Rutgers University, taught Italian and Italian literature at Columbia University, Gettysburg College, and Bernard College. Currently, she lives in Florence and teaches at NYU-Florence. She has published seven poetry collections, and her work has appeared in several Italian and US journals, such as Sirena: Poetry Art and Criticism, Poesia, Linea d’ombra, Atelier, and Rattapallax. Elisa is also a translator from English into Italian (of Alicia Ostriker, Sharon Olds, Lucile Cliftonn and others). She published an anthology of contemporary American poetry, Nuovi Poeti Americani. In 2014, her book The Guest in the Wood, translated by Diana Thow, Sarah Stickney, and Eugene Ostashevsky, won the Best Translated Book Award. According to Roberto Baronti Marchiò, she is “one of the most esteemed voices in recent Italian poetry, is certainly one of the most well-defined and recognizable personalities among the new generation of poets”.

Elisa Biagini’s poems that appear here were first published in a bilingual and trilingual edition at Sirena: Poetry, Art, and Criticism (JHUP 2005:2)

This biographical note has been adapted from Poetry International and Sirena: Poetry, Art, and Criticism.