Peter John Wyllie is a retired petrologist, author and explorer. Born in 1930 in London, Wyllie studied at St Andrews University where he gained a degree in Physics and Geology in 1952. Following this he joined the British North Greenland Expedition as a geologist. The expedition was a pioneering British-led 2 year scientific expedition to the North Greenland Ice Sheet. The expedition sought to conduct research in many areas including geology, seismology, meteorology, gravimetry, physiology and the logistics of operating in a polar climate for prolonged periods.

Following the expedition Wyllie gained a PHD in geology and went on to have a successful academic career in the field. Emigrating to the United States in the late 1950s he was appointed professor of geology at California Institute of Technology in 1983, a position which he held until his retirement in 1999. During his career as an academic Wyllie made notable contributions to research in the field of petrology and authored 2 textbooks in the fields of plate tectonics and magmatism.

Yang Lian was one of the original Misty Poets who reacted against the strictures of the Cultural Revolution. Born in Switzerland, the son of a diplomat, he grew up in Beijing and began writing when he was sent to the countryside in the 1970s. On his return he joined the influential literary magazine Jintian (Today). His work was criticised in China in 1983 and formally banned in 1989 when he organised memorial services for the dead of Tiananmen while in New Zealand. He was a Chinese poet in exile from 1989 to 1995, finally settling in London in 1997. Translations of his poetry include three collections with Bloodaxe, Where the Sea Stands Still (1999), a Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation, Concentric Circles (2005), and Lee Valley Poems (2009), as well as his long poem Yi (Green Integer, USA, 2002) and Riding Pisces: Poems from Five Collections (Shearsman, 2008), a compilation of earlier work. He is co-editor with W.N. Herbert of Jade Ladder: Contemporary Chinese Poetry (Bloodaxe Books, 2012), and was awarded the International Nonino Prize in 2012.

Yi Sha was born in 1966 in Chengdu, and moved with his family at the age of two to the central Chinese city of Xi’an in Shaanxi province. He published his first poems while still at school, studied Chinese at Beijing Normal University, and became a noted figure among China’s university student poets.