Sylva Fischerová was born in 1963 in Prague. She grew up in the Moravian town of Olomouc as a daughter of non-Marxist philosopher whose works were banished under communist rule. She returned to Prague to study philosophy and physics, and later Greek and Latin, at Charles University where she now teaches ancient Greek literature and philosophy. She has published six volumes of poems in Czech, and her poetry has been translated and published in numerous languages. An earlier selection of her poems, The Tremor of Racehorses, translated by Ian and Jarmila Milner, was published by Bloodaxe in 1990. She recently began to write prose, and a book of her stories Miracle, as well as a book for children, appeared in 2005. The Swing in the Middle of Chaos: Selected Poems, co-translated with Stuart Friebert, is published by Bloodaxe in 2009.

Fiona Sampson was first a concert violinist, then studied at the Universities of Oxford, where she won the Newdigate Prize, and Nijmegen, where she received a PhD in the philosophy of language. This research arose from her pioneering residencies in health care. Her latest of her seventeen books is Rough Music, shortlisted for the 2010 Forward and T.S. Eliot Prizes. In 2009 she received a Cholmondeley Award and became an FRSL. She is editor of Poetry Review. She gave the Newcastle/Bloodaxe Poetry Lectures at Newcastle University in 2010, published in 2011 as Music Lessons.

David Ferry is an American poet, translator, and educator.