CONTRIBUTORS
Issue 10, Volume II
"San Sebastian," Memoir:
Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno, translator of the Dalí "San Sebastien" piece and whose memoir
we continue to serialize, is the author of more than a dozen books including biographies of Paul Bowles
and E.E.Cummings, and a group portrait of American writers in Paris 1944-1960, The Continual
Pilgrimage. He is also well-known as a translator and poet. His translations include books by Paul
Eluard, Rafael Alberti, Panaït Istrati, García Lorca and the Mayan Books of Chilam Balam. His most
recent publications are Dix méditations sur quelques mots d’Antonin Artaud, translated by Patricia
Pruitt (Paris: Alyscamps, 2018) Remission (Talisman House, 2016) and Mussoorie-Montague Miscellany
(Talisman House, 2014) Until his retirement he taught writing at MIT for over a quarter-century. He
lives in Turners Falls, Massachusetts. Many of his books are on Amazon.
Fiction:
Sema Kaygusuz has published five story collections and three novels, and is one of Turkey’s leading
contemporary writers. In 2015, the award-winning Maureen Freely translated a selection of her stories, The Well
of Trapped Words: Selected Stories, and in November of 2019, her novel Every Fire You Tend was published
(translated by another award-winner, Nicholas Glastonbury). Her debut novel, Yere Düsen Dualar (Wine and
Gold) won international recognition upon publication in 2006. In 2007, she wrote the screenplay for Yesim
Ustaoğlu's film Pandora’nin Kutusu (Pandora’s Box), which won the Golden Shell at the 2008 International Film
Festival in San Sebastian. She is a recipient of both the Cevdet-Kudret-Literature Award and the France-Turquie
Literary Award.
Pocket Anthology:
Marithelma Costa was born in Puerto Rico, and has been living in New York since 1978. She is the author of
three books of poetry (De Al’vión, De tierra y de agua, and Diario oiraiD), of interviews (Enrique Laguerre. Una
conversación, Kaligrafiando. Conversaciones con Clemente Soto Vélez, and Las dos caras de la escritura.
Conversaciones con M. Benedetti, M. Corti, U. Eco, et al., various books on Spanish literature, and the novel Era el
in del mundo. Currently she teaches at Hunter College. She is working on a collection of short stories and
finishing her second novel.
Marianela Medrano was born and raised in the Dominican Republic and has lived in Connecticut since 1990.
A poet and a writer of nonfiction and fiction, she holds a PhD in psychology. Her literary work has appeared in
numerous anthologies and magazines in Latin America, Europe and the United States. In 2015 she did a TEDTALK
at Ursuline College: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pQeBYd2oJk. Ms. Medrano’s publications include:
Oficio de Vivir (Buho,1986), Los Alegres Ojos de la Tristeza (Buho,1987), Regando Esencias/ The Scent of Waiting
(Alcance,1998), Curada de Espantos (Torremozas, 2002), Diosas de la Yuca, (Torremozas, 2011), Prietica (Alfaguara,
2013). Rooting (Owlfeather Collective, 2017), El Libro de Revelaciones (chapbook), (2019). Her poetry has been
translated into Italian and French.
Reggie Marra, translator, is a poet, educator and coach with four volumes of poetry in print. One copy of
his Killing America: Our United States of Ignorance, Fear, Bigotry, Violence and Greed was sent to each member
of the U.S. Congress, Supreme Court and the President in September, 2018. https://reggiemarra.com/
Laura Ruiz Montes, was born in Matanzas, Cuba, in 1966. The city is deeply embedded in her DNA, and she is
a cultural reference there and beyond. Senior editor at Ediciones Vigía, Matanzas’ unique and highly successful
publisher of handmade limited edition books, Ruiz Montes is also a much sought-after feminist critic and
philosopher of contemporary Cuban life as well as an authority on the tragedy and resistance of Black women in
the francophone Caribbean. She has several poetry collections, most recently Otro retorno al país natal and Los
frutos ácidos, both of which won Cuba’s National Ctritic’s Price for the best book of poetry published in its
respective year. Her voice is lyrical but direct, and reflects Cuba’s complex reality in all its subtle nuances. These
two poems and bio are from Diapositivas / Transparencies.
Margaret Randall, translator, is a writer, translator, photographer, activist and academic. Born in New York
City, she lived for many years in Spain, Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua, and spent time in North Vietnam during
the last months of the U.S. war in that country. She has over sixty books, and has written extensively on her
experiences abroad and back in the United States. She has taught at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and
other colleges, and lives in New Mexico.
Juana M Ramos was born in Santa Ana, El Salvador, Juana M. Ramos is a professor of Spanish and Literature in
York College of the City University of New York. She has participated in international poetry festivals and
conferences in Mexico, Colombia, The Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Argentina, Honduras, Cuba, Puerto Rico,
and Spain. She has published the poetry books Multiplicada en mí (2010, 2014), Palabras al borde de mis labios
(2015), En la batalla (2016), Ruta 51C (2017), and Sobre luciérnagas (2019). She co-authored the book of testimonies
Tomamos la palabra. Mujeres en la Guerra civil de El Salvador (1980-1992) (2016). Also, her poems and short
stories have been featured in several anthologies, literary magazines both in print and in digital formats in Latin
America, USA, and Spain.
Iara Cardo was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He emigrated at age 24 to the United States where he studied
English Literature at the City College of New York He began working on translation of literary works in old
English to modern English , and of Comparative Literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New
York, where he studied English, Spanish, Italian and Welsh medieval Literatures.
Diego Rivelino is a Colombian poet, writer and freethinker based in New York for the past twenty years. His
published books: SINASCO (2007), Bestial Art (2009), Malparidez (2015). He is a member of the collective Poetas
en Nueva York. Rivelino is also known for his performances of Poets in The Basement.
Yrene Santos was born in Villa Tapia, province Hermanas Mirabal, Dominican Republic, 1963, and is an
Adjunct Professor at the City University of New York (CUNY) and St. John’s University. She has published several
books of poetry which include Me sorprendió geométrica – a series of four books (2013) – and Septiembre casi
termina (2016), among others. Santos is co-organizer of The Americas Poetry Festival of New York (TAPFNY)
alongside Carlos Aguasaco. She is also the Secretary of the Association of Dominican Writers in the United States
(ASEDEU).
Yarisa Colón Torres, born in Puerto Rico on March 1st, 1977, is a poet, handmade book creator and Adjunct
Instructor at Bronx Community College, CUNY. For over fifteen years, Yarisa has been experimenting with the
creation of unique handmade books and hand-cut collages. She also organizes bookmaking workshops for
children and adults; publishes limited editions of poetry books; and collaborates with visual artists, performers,
musicians, writers and artisans on multi-disciplinary projects. It brings her great joy to know that her
handmade books have traveled to Ecuador, Spain, France and Italy, among other places around the world.
Mario R. Cancel-Bigay, translator, singer-songwriter, and poet, was born in 1982. He learned to play the
Puerto Rican cuatro, the archipelago’s national guitar, at age twelve at the public school Libre de Música. In 2005,
he earned a B.A. in Modern Languages (Portuguese and French) at the University of Puerto Rico, and in 2014, an
M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies at New York University. Currently, he is a Ph.D. candidate in the
ethnomusicology program at Columbia University where he researches the relationship between interculturality,
intersubjectivity and decoloniality as experienced through the song-making of the Puerto Rico and Québec of the
1960s and 70s.
Portfolio:
Helen Geltman was born in New York City, but now makes her home on the banks of Panther Creek, NC,
where she still shares her life with the children and grandchildren of the first horse she acquired back in 1967.
Much of Ms. Geltman’s art is the expression of images from a life time spent roaming the woods and mountains
with her dogs, horses and children. Ms. Geltman is the musician and choir director for Jones Temple AME Zion
Church, Waynesville, NC, and sings with The Asheville Symphony Chorus, Asheville, NC.
Essay:
Timothy J. Reiss, "Tribute to Kamau Brathwaite." Reiss is Emeritus Professor of Comparative Literature at
New York University. Since retiring he was for five years Distinguished Scholar in Residence at NYU, several
times Visiting Professor at Stanford University and, since 2018, is Visiting Scholar at the University of Hawai’i-
Manoa. His recent books are Against Autonomy: Global Dialectics of Cultural Exchange (2002), Mirages of the
Selfe: Patterns of Personhood in Ancient and Early Modern Europe (2003) and the edited collections Music,
Writing and Cultural Unity in the Caribbean (2005) and Topographies of Race and Gender: Mapping Cultural
Representations (co-ed, 2008-9). His edited collection, Ngũgĩ in the American Imperium will be out later this
year. Recent articles are on Ronsard (2015), Montaigne (2016), Descartes and Fortin de La Hoguette (2017),
Tagliacozzi and medical translation (2018) and the 16th-17th-century “failure” of a transcultural American-
European poetics (2019). He is finishing a book on Descartes and his age’s political practice and thought, and
another on the Renaissance as a stage in long continental and oceanic intercultural exchanges.
Feuilleton:
Brian Cullman is writer & musician living in New York City. He is a regular contributor to The Paris
Review and records for Sunnyside Records. www.briancullman.com
Editors:
Bronwyn Mills holds an MFA from UMass, Amherst, and a Ph.D. from NYU where she was an Anais Nin
Fellow. Later a Fulbright Fellow (La République du Bénin, West Africa) she travels widely, and has lived in New
York City, Istanbul, Turkey; Latin America; and Paris, France. For many years a dance and theatre writer for
regional arts publications in New England, she is also a Senior Prose Editor for Tupelo Quarterly. Books
include Night of the Luna Moths (poetry,) Beastly's Tale (a fabulist novel). She has just completed By the
Spoonmaker's Tomb, vignettes from her time living in Istanbul and is currently working on Canary Club, a novel
set in medieval Spain. Her work has appeared in IKON, Frigate,Talisman: a Journal of Contemporary Poetry and
Poetics, Tupelo Quarterly, and most recently in Agni Online. She guest-edited the Turkish issue of Absinthe; New
European Writing (#19.) Bronwyn has taught at Stevens Institute of Technology; Kadir Has University in
Istanbul; and Abomey-Calavi in Bénin. From time to time she publishes work on African vodou. Bronwyn lives
and writes in a tiny mountain village far, far away. Read more at https://bronwynmills.org/
Eric Darton has published a number of books, including the New York Times bestseller Divided We Stand: A
Biography of The World Trade Center (Basic Books, 1999, 2011), and Free City, a novel, (WW Norton, 1996). He is
also the author of an ongoing work of free scholarship, Book of the World Courant, available at
www.bookoftheworldcourant.net. Recently his essays have been published in Tupelo Quarterly
www.tupeloquarterly.com. More of his work may be found at www.ericdarton.net and here at Witty
Partition. Darton leads Writing at the Crossroads, a workshop for prose writers, a sampling of whose work
appears in issue 2.
Hardy Griffin has a Ph.D. from Boğaziçi University. He has published writing in New Flash
Fiction, Alimentum, Assisi, The Washington Post, American Letters & Commentary, and a chapter in Writing
Fiction (Bloomsbury, 2003). His translations can be found in Words Without Borders, The Istanbul Biennial,
and for the award-winning photographic study Armenians, which documents the lives of Armenians living
in contemporary Turkey. A selection of his work can be found here.
Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno, translator of the Dalí "San Sebastien" piece and whose memoir
we continue to serialize, is the author of more than a dozen books including biographies of Paul Bowles
and E.E.Cummings, and a group portrait of American writers in Paris 1944-1960, The Continual
Pilgrimage. He is also well-known as a translator and poet. His translations include books by Paul
Eluard, Rafael Alberti, Panaït Istrati, García Lorca and the Mayan Books of Chilam Balam. His most
recent publications are Dix méditations sur quelques mots d’Antonin Artaud, translated by Patricia
Pruitt (Paris: Alyscamps, 2018) Remission (Talisman House, 2016) and Mussoorie-Montague Miscellany
(Talisman House, 2014) Until his retirement he taught writing at MIT for over a quarter-century. He
lives in Turners Falls, Massachusetts. Many of his books are on Amazon.
Fiction:
Sema Kaygusuz has published five story collections and three novels, and is one of Turkey’s leading
contemporary writers. In 2015, the award-winning Maureen Freely translated a selection of her stories, The Well
of Trapped Words: Selected Stories, and in November of 2019, her novel Every Fire You Tend was published
(translated by another award-winner, Nicholas Glastonbury). Her debut novel, Yere Düsen Dualar (Wine and
Gold) won international recognition upon publication in 2006. In 2007, she wrote the screenplay for Yesim
Ustaoğlu's film Pandora’nin Kutusu (Pandora’s Box), which won the Golden Shell at the 2008 International Film
Festival in San Sebastian. She is a recipient of both the Cevdet-Kudret-Literature Award and the France-Turquie
Literary Award.
Pocket Anthology:
Marithelma Costa was born in Puerto Rico, and has been living in New York since 1978. She is the author of
three books of poetry (De Al’vión, De tierra y de agua, and Diario oiraiD), of interviews (Enrique Laguerre. Una
conversación, Kaligrafiando. Conversaciones con Clemente Soto Vélez, and Las dos caras de la escritura.
Conversaciones con M. Benedetti, M. Corti, U. Eco, et al., various books on Spanish literature, and the novel Era el
in del mundo. Currently she teaches at Hunter College. She is working on a collection of short stories and
finishing her second novel.
Marianela Medrano was born and raised in the Dominican Republic and has lived in Connecticut since 1990.
A poet and a writer of nonfiction and fiction, she holds a PhD in psychology. Her literary work has appeared in
numerous anthologies and magazines in Latin America, Europe and the United States. In 2015 she did a TEDTALK
at Ursuline College: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pQeBYd2oJk. Ms. Medrano’s publications include:
Oficio de Vivir (Buho,1986), Los Alegres Ojos de la Tristeza (Buho,1987), Regando Esencias/ The Scent of Waiting
(Alcance,1998), Curada de Espantos (Torremozas, 2002), Diosas de la Yuca, (Torremozas, 2011), Prietica (Alfaguara,
2013). Rooting (Owlfeather Collective, 2017), El Libro de Revelaciones (chapbook), (2019). Her poetry has been
translated into Italian and French.
Reggie Marra, translator, is a poet, educator and coach with four volumes of poetry in print. One copy of
his Killing America: Our United States of Ignorance, Fear, Bigotry, Violence and Greed was sent to each member
of the U.S. Congress, Supreme Court and the President in September, 2018. https://reggiemarra.com/
Laura Ruiz Montes, was born in Matanzas, Cuba, in 1966. The city is deeply embedded in her DNA, and she is
a cultural reference there and beyond. Senior editor at Ediciones Vigía, Matanzas’ unique and highly successful
publisher of handmade limited edition books, Ruiz Montes is also a much sought-after feminist critic and
philosopher of contemporary Cuban life as well as an authority on the tragedy and resistance of Black women in
the francophone Caribbean. She has several poetry collections, most recently Otro retorno al país natal and Los
frutos ácidos, both of which won Cuba’s National Ctritic’s Price for the best book of poetry published in its
respective year. Her voice is lyrical but direct, and reflects Cuba’s complex reality in all its subtle nuances. These
two poems and bio are from Diapositivas / Transparencies.
Margaret Randall, translator, is a writer, translator, photographer, activist and academic. Born in New York
City, she lived for many years in Spain, Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua, and spent time in North Vietnam during
the last months of the U.S. war in that country. She has over sixty books, and has written extensively on her
experiences abroad and back in the United States. She has taught at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and
other colleges, and lives in New Mexico.
Juana M Ramos was born in Santa Ana, El Salvador, Juana M. Ramos is a professor of Spanish and Literature in
York College of the City University of New York. She has participated in international poetry festivals and
conferences in Mexico, Colombia, The Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Argentina, Honduras, Cuba, Puerto Rico,
and Spain. She has published the poetry books Multiplicada en mí (2010, 2014), Palabras al borde de mis labios
(2015), En la batalla (2016), Ruta 51C (2017), and Sobre luciérnagas (2019). She co-authored the book of testimonies
Tomamos la palabra. Mujeres en la Guerra civil de El Salvador (1980-1992) (2016). Also, her poems and short
stories have been featured in several anthologies, literary magazines both in print and in digital formats in Latin
America, USA, and Spain.
Iara Cardo was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He emigrated at age 24 to the United States where he studied
English Literature at the City College of New York He began working on translation of literary works in old
English to modern English , and of Comparative Literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New
York, where he studied English, Spanish, Italian and Welsh medieval Literatures.
Diego Rivelino is a Colombian poet, writer and freethinker based in New York for the past twenty years. His
published books: SINASCO (2007), Bestial Art (2009), Malparidez (2015). He is a member of the collective Poetas
en Nueva York. Rivelino is also known for his performances of Poets in The Basement.
Yrene Santos was born in Villa Tapia, province Hermanas Mirabal, Dominican Republic, 1963, and is an
Adjunct Professor at the City University of New York (CUNY) and St. John’s University. She has published several
books of poetry which include Me sorprendió geométrica – a series of four books (2013) – and Septiembre casi
termina (2016), among others. Santos is co-organizer of The Americas Poetry Festival of New York (TAPFNY)
alongside Carlos Aguasaco. She is also the Secretary of the Association of Dominican Writers in the United States
(ASEDEU).
Yarisa Colón Torres, born in Puerto Rico on March 1st, 1977, is a poet, handmade book creator and Adjunct
Instructor at Bronx Community College, CUNY. For over fifteen years, Yarisa has been experimenting with the
creation of unique handmade books and hand-cut collages. She also organizes bookmaking workshops for
children and adults; publishes limited editions of poetry books; and collaborates with visual artists, performers,
musicians, writers and artisans on multi-disciplinary projects. It brings her great joy to know that her
handmade books have traveled to Ecuador, Spain, France and Italy, among other places around the world.
Mario R. Cancel-Bigay, translator, singer-songwriter, and poet, was born in 1982. He learned to play the
Puerto Rican cuatro, the archipelago’s national guitar, at age twelve at the public school Libre de Música. In 2005,
he earned a B.A. in Modern Languages (Portuguese and French) at the University of Puerto Rico, and in 2014, an
M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies at New York University. Currently, he is a Ph.D. candidate in the
ethnomusicology program at Columbia University where he researches the relationship between interculturality,
intersubjectivity and decoloniality as experienced through the song-making of the Puerto Rico and Québec of the
1960s and 70s.
Portfolio:
Helen Geltman was born in New York City, but now makes her home on the banks of Panther Creek, NC,
where she still shares her life with the children and grandchildren of the first horse she acquired back in 1967.
Much of Ms. Geltman’s art is the expression of images from a life time spent roaming the woods and mountains
with her dogs, horses and children. Ms. Geltman is the musician and choir director for Jones Temple AME Zion
Church, Waynesville, NC, and sings with The Asheville Symphony Chorus, Asheville, NC.
Essay:
Timothy J. Reiss, "Tribute to Kamau Brathwaite." Reiss is Emeritus Professor of Comparative Literature at
New York University. Since retiring he was for five years Distinguished Scholar in Residence at NYU, several
times Visiting Professor at Stanford University and, since 2018, is Visiting Scholar at the University of Hawai’i-
Manoa. His recent books are Against Autonomy: Global Dialectics of Cultural Exchange (2002), Mirages of the
Selfe: Patterns of Personhood in Ancient and Early Modern Europe (2003) and the edited collections Music,
Writing and Cultural Unity in the Caribbean (2005) and Topographies of Race and Gender: Mapping Cultural
Representations (co-ed, 2008-9). His edited collection, Ngũgĩ in the American Imperium will be out later this
year. Recent articles are on Ronsard (2015), Montaigne (2016), Descartes and Fortin de La Hoguette (2017),
Tagliacozzi and medical translation (2018) and the 16th-17th-century “failure” of a transcultural American-
European poetics (2019). He is finishing a book on Descartes and his age’s political practice and thought, and
another on the Renaissance as a stage in long continental and oceanic intercultural exchanges.
Feuilleton:
Brian Cullman is writer & musician living in New York City. He is a regular contributor to The Paris
Review and records for Sunnyside Records. www.briancullman.com
Editors:
Bronwyn Mills holds an MFA from UMass, Amherst, and a Ph.D. from NYU where she was an Anais Nin
Fellow. Later a Fulbright Fellow (La République du Bénin, West Africa) she travels widely, and has lived in New
York City, Istanbul, Turkey; Latin America; and Paris, France. For many years a dance and theatre writer for
regional arts publications in New England, she is also a Senior Prose Editor for Tupelo Quarterly. Books
include Night of the Luna Moths (poetry,) Beastly's Tale (a fabulist novel). She has just completed By the
Spoonmaker's Tomb, vignettes from her time living in Istanbul and is currently working on Canary Club, a novel
set in medieval Spain. Her work has appeared in IKON, Frigate,Talisman: a Journal of Contemporary Poetry and
Poetics, Tupelo Quarterly, and most recently in Agni Online. She guest-edited the Turkish issue of Absinthe; New
European Writing (#19.) Bronwyn has taught at Stevens Institute of Technology; Kadir Has University in
Istanbul; and Abomey-Calavi in Bénin. From time to time she publishes work on African vodou. Bronwyn lives
and writes in a tiny mountain village far, far away. Read more at https://bronwynmills.org/
Eric Darton has published a number of books, including the New York Times bestseller Divided We Stand: A
Biography of The World Trade Center (Basic Books, 1999, 2011), and Free City, a novel, (WW Norton, 1996). He is
also the author of an ongoing work of free scholarship, Book of the World Courant, available at
www.bookoftheworldcourant.net. Recently his essays have been published in Tupelo Quarterly
www.tupeloquarterly.com. More of his work may be found at www.ericdarton.net and here at Witty
Partition. Darton leads Writing at the Crossroads, a workshop for prose writers, a sampling of whose work
appears in issue 2.
Hardy Griffin has a Ph.D. from Boğaziçi University. He has published writing in New Flash
Fiction, Alimentum, Assisi, The Washington Post, American Letters & Commentary, and a chapter in Writing
Fiction (Bloomsbury, 2003). His translations can be found in Words Without Borders, The Istanbul Biennial,
and for the award-winning photographic study Armenians, which documents the lives of Armenians living
in contemporary Turkey. A selection of his work can be found here.