Polina Barskova is a Russian poet and essayist. Her most recent works include Living Pictures (NYRB, 2022) and Besieged Leningrad (Cornell, 2017). She edited Written in the Dark: Five Poets in the Siege of Leningrad (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2016). She teaches at UC Berkeley.

Catherine Ciepiela is a scholar and translator of Russian poetry. She is the author of The Same Solitude: Boris Pasternak and Marina Tsvetaeva (Cornell 2006), which received the AATSEEL Prize for Best Book of Literary/Cultural Criticism in 2007. She teaches at Amherst College.