Abdourahman A. Waberi is a poet, novelist, and essayist. He was born in what is now known as the Republic of Djibouti and is a major voice in African postcolonial studies. Waberi is the author of the novel In the United States of Africa (Bison Books, 2009) and has received a multitude of awards and honors, including a PEN France prize and, most recently, a medal from the French Academy. He is an associate professor of French at George Washington University. Nancy Naomi Carlson is a poet, translator, and essayist. She is the recipient of two translation grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the winner of the 2022 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. She is the author or translator of fifteen books, including her poetry collection Piano in the Dark and her translation of Samira Negrouche’s poetry collection Solio.