Author's Biography: Leza Lowitz was born in San Francisco, California in 1962. She holds a B.A. in English Literature from U.C. Berkeley and an M.A. in Creative writing from San Francisco State University. She has received numerous awards for her poetry, fiction, and translations, among them: the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for the best book of poetry and the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award. She has also received a Translation Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She has published several poetry, fiction and translation books. Some of her books are: Yoga Heart: Lines on the Six Perfections (2011), America and other Poems by Ayukawa Nobuo (co-translator with Shogo Oketani,… 2007), 100 Aspects of the Moon (2003), Old Ways to Fold New Paper (1997), Green Tea to Go: Stories from Tokyo (2006), Sacred Sanskrit Words: For Yoga, Chant and Meditation (with Reema Datta, 2006), Designing with Kanji: Japanese Character Motifs for Surface, Skin & Spirit (with Shogo Oketani, 2004), Beautiful Japan: A Souvenir (1996). She currently lives in Tokyo. She can be reached at www.lezalowitz.com Translator's Biography: Nazanin Mirsadeghi was born in 1967 in Tehran. She studied Nutrition Sciences and Spanish Literature before moving to the United States in 1996. Her translations- from Spanish and English to Persian (Farsi) - have been published in several literary magazines in Iran and in the U.S. She has also translated four selections of poetry from Federico Garcia Lorca, Pablo Neruda and Rafael Alberti which all have been published in Iran. Her latest translations "The Death Leaves", a novel by Barbara Jacobs and "The White Tiger", a novel by Aravind Adiga are under publication. She currently lives in New York. She can be reached at www.nazaninmirsadeghi.com