Bill Wolak is a poet who lives in New Jersey and teaches Creative Writing at William Paterson University. He has just published his twelfth collection of poetry entitled The Lover’s Body. His poetry has appeared in over a hundred magazines. His most recent translation with Mahmood Karimi-Hakak, Love Me More Than the Others: Selected Poetry or Iraj Mirza, was published by Cross-Cultural Communications in 2014. His translations have appeared in such magazines as The Sufi Journal, Basalt, Visions International, World Poetry Journal, and Atlanta Review.

His critical work and interviews have appeared in Notre Dame Review, Persian Heritage Magazine, Gargoyle, Southern Humanities Review, The Paterson Literary Review, Ascent, Florida English, and Prime Numbers Magazine. Mr. Wolak has been awarded several National Endowment for the Humanities scholarships and two Fulbright-Hays scholarships to study and travel in India.

In 2007, he was selected to participate in a Friendship Delegation to Iran sponsored by the Fellowship of Reconciliation, America’s largest and oldest interfaith peace and justice organization. During the Summer of 2010, Mr. Wolak was awarded a Field Study Opportunity in China and Japan by the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia. He was selected to be a featured poet at festivals in India four times: at the 2011 Kritya International Poetry Festival in Nagpur, at the 2013 Hyderabad Literary Festival, at the Tarjuma 2013: Festival of Translators in Ahmedabad, and most recently at the 2014 Hyderabad Literary Festival.

Ratna Kaji Shakya, whose art work appears throughout this book as well as on the front cover, is an artist working in watercolors and acrylics, who lives in Kathmandu, Nepal. In addition, he is the director of Light & Shade Art Gallery in Katmandu. Over the years, he has been awarded several prizes for his paintings, and his work appears in many private collections in Nepal as well as abroad in such countries as the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Norway, Turkey, Denmark, South Korea, Japan, India, Pakistan, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Holland, Ireland, Belgium, Argentina, China, Spain, Chile, Israel, Jordan, Scotland, and Bahrain. Ratna Kaji Shakya’s diverse experiments with oval forms has led him to a comprehensive theory of fine art which he has dubbed Ovalism. Through Ovalism, he undertakes to explain the omnipresent importance of the oval form in every aspect of existence.