Gregory Rabassa (born 9 March 1922) is a renowned literary translator from Spanish and Portuguese to English who currently teaches at Queens College where he is a Distinguished Professor. Rabassa received a bachelor's degree from Dartmouth; he enrolled as a graduate student at Columbia University, where he earned a doctorate. He taught for over two decades at Columbia University before accepting a position at Queens College. Typically, Rabassa translates without reading the book beforehand, working as he goes. Rabassa had a particularly close and productive working relation with Cort�zar. For his version of Cort�zar's novel, Hopscotch, Rabassa received a National Book Award for… Translation. In 2006, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. He has written a memoir detailing his experiences as a translator, If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents, A Memoir.
Award-winning writer and literary critic Colm T�ib�n was born in Enniscorthy, Ireland in 1955. He studied history and English at University College Dublin, earning his B.A. in 1975. After graduating he moved to Barcelona for three years and taught at the Dublin School of English. In 1978 T�ib�n returned to Dublin and began working on an M.A. in Modern English and American Literature. He wrote for In Dublin, Hibernia, and The Sunday Tribune. T�ib�n became the Features Editor of In Dublin in 1981, and then a year later accepted the position of Editor for the Irish current affairs magazine Magill. His first book, "Walking Along the Border," was published in 1987, and his first… novel, "The South," debuted in 1990. T�ib�n wrote for The Sunday Independent as a drama or television critic and political commentator. He has penned several more novels and a travel book, plus edited anthologies and a book of essays, created a play, and written regularly for The London Review of Books. T�ib�n's second novel, "The Heather Blazing," received the 1993 Encore Award, and "The Master" achieved the 2006 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Los Angeles Times Novel of the Year, the Stonewall Book Award, and the Lambda Literary Award. T�ib�n has been a visiting professor or lecturer at many American universities. In recognition of his contribution to contemporary Irish literature, he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from the University of Ulster in 2008. He made The New York Times Best Seller List with his title Nora Webster.