TE17 Mysterious Montenegro

TE 17-9

VALTS ERNŠTREITS ten poems

Valts Ernštreits (born in Rīga, 1974) has grandparents from the Livonianvillageof Pizā (Miķeļtornis), and hisancestrygoes back to the first Livonian poet, Jāņ Prints. Ernštreits writes poetry in both Livonian and Latvian. He has published two collections inLatvianandeditedseveral collectionsof Livonian poetry. He works as a linguist, translator, and interpreter and is actively involved in the revitalization of Livonian language and culture. This is his first collection of Livonian poetry published in a bilingual edition.

TE 17-10

ALTA IFLAND Serioja, Maria and the Mop (novel excerpt)

Alta Ifland was born and grewup in Communist Romania and migrated to the US in 1991 in her mid-twenties as a political refugee. After a Ph.D. in French language and literature, she worked as a lecturer in French, then as a literary translator and book reviewer. Her translations from/into French and Romanian include works by Raymond Queneau, Norman Manea,MarianaMarinandW. S.Merwin. Heroriginalwritings are: Voix de glace/Voice of ice (prose poems written in French, then translated into English; Les Figures Press, 2007—2008 Louis Guillaume Prize for prose poems); Elegy for a Fabulous World (short stories; Ninebark Press, 2009; finalist for the 2010 Northern California Book Award in Fiction); Death-in-a- Box (short stories; Subito Press, 2011; 2010 Subito Press Fiction Prize); The Snail’s Song (prose poems with drawings by the author; Spuyten Duyvil, 2012). She currently lives in Northern California.

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