Agron Tufa (b. 1967), was born in Suhadoll in the Dibra region of eastern Albania and studied literature at the University of Tirana. He continued his studies in Moscow in the 1990s where he graduated in translation theory, with particular concentration on the work of Joseph Brodsky. Since his return to Albania, he has been involved in the literary magazine E për-7-shme (Suitable) and edited the much-admired periodical Aleph . He is now editor of the literary supplement FjalA (The Word) and teaches literature at the University of Tirana.

Tufa has published poetry and prose of note. He is the author of the verse collections Aty te portat Skée , Elbasan 1996 (There at the Scaean Gates); and Rrethinat e Atlantidës , Tirana 2002 (The Surrounding of Atlantis); and the novels Dueli , Tirana 2002 (The Duel); and Fabula rasa , Tirana 2004 (Fabula Rasa). He has also translated many Russian authors, among whom Joseph Brodsky, Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelshtam, Boris Pasternak, Andrei Platonov, Mikhail Bulgakov, Vladimir Nabokov, and Vladimir Sorokin.

Translator Robert Elsie (Vancouver, Canada, 1950) is a leading specialist in Albanian affairs. He is the author of thirty-five books on Albania and its culture, including literary translations from Albanian, and of many articles and research papers. Elsie studied at the University of British Columbia, graduating in 1972 with a degree in classical studies and linguistics. In the following years, he did postgraduate research at the Free University of Berlin, the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes and the University of Paris IV in Paris, the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in Ireland and the University of Bonn, where he finished his doctorate in 1978 at the Linguistics Institute. From 1982 to 1987, he was employed by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Bonn. Since that time he has worked as a freelance writer and conference interpreter, primarily for Albanian and German. He lives in the Eifel Mountains of Germany, not far from the Belgian border.

Weblinks:   www.elsie.de and www.albanianliterature.com