Marina Razumovsky was born in Czechoslovakia. She was educated in Troppau and Vienna and left Czechoslovakia in 1946. From then until 1986, she was a librarian in the National Library of Austria in Vienna specialising in Russian literature. She is a member of Vereinigung Osterreichischer Bibliothekare, and was for many years the Austrian representative in different commissions of the International Federation of Library Associations. She has published many articles in library journals and Festchriften. Her translations from Russian include Voslensky's Nomenklatura, and E.N. Sayn-Waittgenstein's Diary 1914-18, her mother's first-hand account of life before and during the Russian Revolution. She lives in Vienna. Countess Razumovsky's family comes from Russia and was rather influential there during the 18th Century. Her great-great-grandfather was Hetman of Ukraine uner the Empresses Elizabeth and Catherine II. Two of his sons settled in Austria: one, Count, later Price Andre Razumovsky, was Russian Ambassador to the court of Vienna during the Napoleonic Wars and a Friend and protector of Beethoven (who dedicated his Razumovsky Quartets to him); the other, her great-grandfather Count Gergoire Razumovsky, was a distinguished geologist.

Sally Read was born in Suffolk in 1971. She trained and worked as a psychiatric nurse in London while completing a BA with the Open University, and went on to earn her MA at the University of South Dakota, USA. She received an Eric Gregory Award in 2001. Her three poetry collections with Bloodaxe are The Point of Splitting (2005), which was shortlisted for the Jerwood-Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, Broken Sleep (2009) and The Day Hospital (2012). The Poetry Archive released her audio CD Sally Read reading from her poems in 2010.

Her poems have appeared in several anthologies, including Roddy Lumsden’s Identity Parade (Bloodaxe Books, 2010), The Picador Book of Love Poems (2011), and Poems of the Decade (Forward Publishing, 2011). A selected poems in Italian, translated by Andrea Sirotti and Loredana Magazzeni, is nearing completion. She is a member of La Compagnia delle Poete, a theatrical Italian co-operative of poets.

Sally Read is based in Santa Marinella, Rome, and in Bungay, Suffolk. She is currently poet in residence of the Hermitage of the Three Holy Hierarchs.