Joel Agee has translated numerous German authors into English, including Heinrich von Kleist, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Elias Canetti. In 2005 he received the Modern Language Association’s Lois Roth Award for his translation of Hans Erich Nossack’s The End: Hamburg 1943. Sven Birkerts teaches at Mount Holyoke College and the Bennington Writing Seminary. He lives in Arlington, Massachusetts.