Ulrike Almut Sandig (Großenhain, GDR, 1979) lives with her family in Berlin. She holds an MA in Religious Studies and Modern Indology and an MFA from the German Literary Institute in Leipzig. As a performer, she works with composers and performance artists, including Hinemoana Baker, and Alif and Grigory Semenchuk. She has published four volumes of poetry, two story collections and three albums of musical lyrics. Karen Leeder’s translations of Sandig’s poetry collection, Thick of it (Seagull Books), won the English PEN translation pitch and received a PEN America/Heim Translation Fund Grant. In 2018 Sandig and Semenchuk, aka Poetry-Band Landschaft, published their debut album with Schöffling & Co. In 2018, Hurst Street Press (Oxford/London, UK) launched a cycle of Sandig’s poetry collection, GRIMM, translated by Leeder. Sandig is a member of the German PEN section.

Bradley Schmidt grew up in rural Kansas, completed a B.A. in German Studies at Bethel College (KS), studied German Literature and Theology in Marburg, and completed a masters in translation studies at Leipzig University. He lives and works in Leipzig as a translator and editor. He has been an adjunct instructor at Leipzig University since autumn 2009. He is an Assistant Editor at Asymptote and his translations of contemporary German poetry and prose have been published widely online and in print. Anna Kim’s Anatomy of a Night (Frisch & Co.) was critically acclaimed. Missing Witnesses is his first translation to be published in book form.