About the Author

Tony Barnstone is an associate professor of creative writing and American literature at Whittier College. His first book of poetry, Impure, was a finalist for several national literary awards, among them the Academy of American Poets Walt Whitman Prize, the National Poetry Series Prize, and the White Pine Prize. His other books include Out of the Howling Storm: The New Chinese Poetry, Laughing Lost in the Mountains: Selected Poems of Wang Wei (with Willis Barnstone and Xu Haixin), The Art of Writing: Teachings of the Chinese Masters (with Chou Ping), and several textbooks about world literature. His poetry, translations, essays, and fiction have appeared in dozens of literary journals, from The American Poet Review to Agni. He lives in California.

Chou Ping writes poetry in both Chinese and English. His poems and translations have appeared in such journals as The Literary Review and Nimrod. Born in Changsha City, Hunan province, in 1957, he holds degrees from Beijing Foreign Language University, Indiana University, and Stanford University. He is the translator, with Tony Barnstone, of The Art of Writing: Teachings of the Chinese Masters, and he has taught at Stanford, Washington University, Oberlin College, The College of Wooster, and Reed College. He lives in Oregon.