Unlike many of her contemporaries, Anzhelina Polonskaya did not receive a classic Russian literary education, so her work is considerably more idiosyncratic and less anchored in tradition. This book, her first collection in English translation since 2005, includes her cycle "Kursk," an oratorio requiem with music by David Chisolm that will be performed across Australia and the United States.

Anzhelina Polonskaya was born in Malakhovka, a small town near Moscow, Russia. She began to write poems seriously at the age of eighteen. Between 1995 and 1997 she lived in Latin America, working as a professional ice dancer. Her first book of verse Svetoch Moi Nebesny (My Heavenly Torch) appeared in 1993. Eventually deciding to leave ice skating, and to devote herself full-time to literature, Polonskaya consistently has been one of the freshest voices writing on both the Russian and world stage.

Andrew Wachtel is the president of the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Previously he was dean of The Graduate School and director of the Roberta Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies at Northwestern University. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the author of numerous publications, he is also a translator from Russian, Bosnian/Croation/Serbian, and Slovene. He translated Anzhelina Polonskaya's previous collection, A Voice (Northwestern University Press, 1995).