Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941) was one of the most renowned poets of 20th-century Russia. Her life coincided with years of extreme turbulence in Russian history. She left Russia in 1922 with her daughter and her husband, Sergei Efron. In 1925 the family settled in Paris where they lived in poverty. In 1939 Tsvetaeva returned to the Soviet Union. Following the arrest of her husband and daughter, she hanged herself on August 31, 1941. A'Dora Phillips holds an MFA in Fiction from UMass Amherst and is currently pursuing a PhD in English (Creative Writing Fiction) at the University of Cincinnati. She taught writing for five years at UMass-Amherst and currently serves as an associate mentor in the City University of Hong Kong's low-residency MFA program.

In addition to writing, she studied traditional drawing and painting for many years, and has made her home in such places as Turkey, Romania, Italy, France, and the Czech Republic - experiences that inform her translation and writing. Gaëlle Cogan holds an M.A. in American Literature from the Université Paris IV-Sorbonne and a diploma in Literature and Languages from the École Normale Supérieure (Paris). She also studied Physical Therapy at the University of Health Sciences in Lausanne, with a particular interest in musicians' health. She currently lives and works as a physical therapist in Switzerland.