Abdullah Konushevci (b. 1958) was born and raised in Prishtina, studied literature at the University of Zagreb, and worked for many years as a journalist for the Kosova daily newspaper Rilindja. He is noted not only as a leading Kosova poet, but also for his essays and writings on Albanian literature and on the Albanian language.

Konushevci is an author of six volumes of intense verse: Pasqyrë dhe diell (Mirror and Sun), Prishtina 1979; Rënia e molles (The Fall of the Apple), Prishtina 1981; Qerrja e diellit (The Sun's Carriage), Prishtina 1983; Loja e strucit (The Game of the Ostrich), Prishtina 1987); Të qenët të mosqenë (The Unbeen Beings), Prishtina 1990; and most recently Pikat AD (The Drops AD), Prishtina 2002, with its startling reflections on the 1999 war in Kosova. He has also translated Ernest Hemingway, Rabindranath Tagore and Milovoj Slavicek into Albanian

Translator Robert Elsie (Vancouver, Canada, 1950) is a leading specialist in Albanian affairs. He is the author of thirty-five books on Albania and its culture, including literary translations from Albanian, and of many articles and research papers. Elsie studied at the University of British Columbia, graduating in 1972 with a degree in classical studies and linguistics. In the following years, he did postgraduate research at the Free University of Berlin, the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes and the University of Paris IV in Paris, the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in Ireland and the University of Bonn, where he finished his doctorate in 1978 at the Linguistics Institute. From 1982 to 1987, he was employed by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Bonn. Since that time he has worked as a freelance writer and conference interpreter, primarily for Albanian and German. He lives in the Eifel Mountains of Germany, not far from the Belgian border.

Weblinks:   www.elsie.de and www.albanianliterature.com