Francesca PellegrinoFrancesca Pellegrino was born in Taranto, where she currently lives. Her works include a chapbook, L'Enunciato / Enunciation (Libraria Padovana Editrice), published in the series Donne in poesia in 2008, Dimentico sempre di dare l'acqua i sogni / I Always Forget to Water the Dreams (Kimerik, 2009) and Niente di personale / Nothing Personal (Samiszdat 2009). Chernobylove - II giorno dopo il vent appeared in 2010 (Kimerik). Selections from these four titles are included in the present Chelsea collection. Her work has appeared in various literary magazines, including La Clessidra (Joker Editore) and La Mosca di Milano (La Vita Felice); translations of her poems by Emanuele di Pasquale have appeared in Journal of Italian Translation and Gradiva. In 2011, she organized a poetry exhibition, Sezioni, as well as a multimedia exhibition, Naturamorta live, in Grottaglie, Taranto. She is a coordinator of the literary magazine LibrAria.

Translator Adria Bernardi received the 2007 Raiziss/de Palchi Translation Award of the American Academy of Poets for Small Talk, a translation of poetry written in the romagnole dialect by the Italian poet Raffaello Baldini. She has also translated Siren's Song, prose and poetry of Rinaldo Caddeo; Adventures in Africa, a work of nonfiction by Gianni Celati; and the poetry of Italian screenwriter Tonino Guerra in the collection Abandoned Places. She is the author of the novels Openwork (Southern Methodist University Press, 2007) and The Day Laid on the Altar (University Press of New England, 1999), which was awarded the Bakeless Fiction Prize, and a collection of short stories, In the Gathering Woods, (winner of the Drue Heinz Prize, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000). She is also the author of an oral history, Houses with Names: The Italian Immigrants of Highwood, Illinois (University of Illinois Press, 2000). She has taught at the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Read More Read Less