Mirko Gashi (1939-1995), born in Kraljevo in Serbia, attended elementary school in Presheva and secondary school in Gjilan. He studied journalism in Belgrade and worked subsequently as a reporter for the newspaper Flaka e vëllazërimit (Flame of Brotherhood) in Skopje and for Radio Prishtina. He was much admired in the 1980s for his verse, which was compiled in particular in the collections: Gjarpëri i shtëpise , Prishtina 1980 (The House Snake); Arbor vitae , Prishtina 1988 (The Tree of Life); and Plagë uji , Prishtina 1990 (Water Wound). He also translated much Kosova Albanian literature into BCS (Serbo-Croatian). Always a rebel, and suffering increasingly from depression in later years, Gashi turned to alcohol for salvation and died of it in July 1995.

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