Paul Nizon was born in Berne in 1929. After an early career as an art historian and critic, he turned to writing full time in 1962, and moved to Paris in 1977, where he still resides. His work has won numerous awards, including the prestigious Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 2011. Jean M. Snook lives with her husband on the easternmost tip of North America, the Avalon Peninsula on the island of Newfoundland, where she has taught German language and literature at Memorial University since 1984. She received the 2011 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator s Prize for her translation of Gert Jonke s The Distant Sound.