Odile Cisneros (MLCS) is a poetry scholar and translator with interests in Latin American avant-gardes, contemporary Brazilian poetry, concrete poetry, ecopoetics, and literary translation who teaches in the Department of Modern Languages & Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta. She recently translated Galáxias by Haroldo de Campos (2024), has coedited Novas: Selected Writings of Haroldo de Campos and has translated the work of Jaroslave Seifert, Régis Bonvicino, and Sérgio Medeiros, among others. Her translations are included in the Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry. She also creates and manages the website ecopoesia.com.
Piet Defraeye is a theatre comparativist and teaches Performance Studies and Contemporary Theatre for the Drama Department at the University of Alberta. Apart from critical research, he also directs for the stage, and has translated theatre and poetry from French, German, and Dutch, into English. He is engaged in a large research project on cultural discourse surrounding the figure of Patrice Lumumba, which involves a lot of poetry translation.
Luciana Erregue (Laberinto Press) is an award-winning publisher (Laberinto Press), art historian, translator, author (Of Mothers and Madonna, Polyglot 2023) and cultural worker. Luciana has presented at LitFest, Edmonton Poetry Fest, and Banff Centre. Her work and translations have appeared in academic publications, Polyglot Magazine, AGNI, and others, and she has been featured on CBC Edmonton, Radio Canada, Quill and Quire, Literary Review of Canada, Westword, and Edmonton Journal. She is an activist for freedom to read and an advocate for hyphened Canadian literature.
Pál Hegyi (Wirth Institute) is an Associate Professor at the Department of American Studies, ELTE who has authored publications on American and Hungarian contemporary literature and popular culture. He has translated works into Hungarian by Paul Auster, Susan Howe, David Cronenberg, Philip K. Dick, Stephen King, and Elmore Leonard; two monographs (Paul Auster: Fehér terek [Paul Auster: White Spaces] and Lovecraft Laughing: Uncanny Memes in the Weird), a third volume on the American Sublime in 2021 (Az amerikai fenségesről – a puritanizmustól a metamodernig), and Paul Auster's Early Works and the Fallacy of Critical Reception (2024).
Christopher Lupke (East Asian Studies) is a Professor in the Department of East Asian Studies. His research interests lie in modern and contemporary Chinese literature, cinema, and culture. An award-winning translator of Chinese literature and literary scholarship, he regards translation as one of the most important contributions a scholar of Chinese can make to the profession. His translations of poems, short stories, prose works, critical essays, and interviews, as well as a novel and a history of Chinese literature from Taiwan number over fifty. He has held a Residency Fellowship in translation at the Vermont Studio Center and his current book project examines the representation of filiality or filial piety in modern and contemporary Chinese literature and film. He also devotes much time to the translation of the poetry of Xiao Kaiyu and others.
Medgine Mathurin (City of Edmonton’s current and 11th Poet Laureate), is a multilingual spoken word poet whose artistic practice is a celebration of linguistic diversity and cultural harmony. Through her poetry, she fuses French, English and Haitian Creole with themes of healing, lessons of courage and intergenerational stories. She is a recipient of the 2023 Edmonton Artists’ Trust Fund Award, a two-time recipient of the National Black Coalition of Canada and author of a multilingual chapbook Waiting in the Land of the Living/Attendre danse le monde des vivants. Her work has been featured on CBC, Global TV, SkirtsAfire Festival, and the Edmonton Poetry Festival.
Stefano Muneroni (MLCS/Drama) is a Professor of Theatre and Italian Studies at the University of Alberta. He has published three books: Play Analysis: the Dramaturgical Turn (Kendall Hunt, 2014), Staging Sainthood in the Early Modern Period (Palgrave, 2017), and Sforza Pallavicino's Martyr Hermegild (Center for Reformation and Renaissance Studies Press, 2019). His new book is tentatively titled Mediterranean Migration in Italian Theatre, Performance, and Public Art.