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  • Hiromi Kawakami

    Hiromi Kawakami (b. 1958, Tokyo) is one of the most popular and respected writers of fiction in Japan, and she is also known as a literary critic and a provocative essayist. Her first novel, Kamisama (God), was published in 1994. In 1996 she was awarded the Akutagawa Prize for Hebi wo fumu (Tread on a snake) and subsequently won the It? Sei Literature Prize, the Woman Writer's Prize, the Tanizaki Prize. In 2007 she was honored by the Ministry of Education for her novel Manazuru, which was subsequently published in Michael Emmerich's translation (Counterpoint, 2010), and her novel The Briefcase, translated by Allison Markin Powell, is forthcoming from Counterpoint in February 2012. (Adapted from Wikipedia)


  • Mihret Kebede

    Mihret Kebede was born in Dessie, Ethiopia. Mihret is the founding director of Netsa Art Village, an artists’ collective, and manager of the Ethio color/Fendika band, and the Tobiya Poetic Jazz event. Mihret is currently a PhD candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Her dissertation concerns Silence.



  • Eleni Kefala

    Eleni Kefala has published two books of poetry. She has been a finalist for the Diavazo First-Time Author Award (Greece) and winner of the State Prize for Poetry (Cyprus). She was a juror for the 2022 Neustadt Prize, and she teaches Latin American and comparative literature at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.



  • Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp

    Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp is a literary translator—working from Arabic, Russian, and German into English—whose work has been shortlisted for the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize, the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize, and the GLLI Translated YA Book Prize. She is co-editor of World Kid Lit blog, and she champions world literature for young people in schools and online, especially during #WorldKidLitMonth.


  • Alicia Kennedy

    Alicia Kennedy is a writer from New York based in San Juan. Kennedy writes a weekly newsletter on food culture, politics, and media and is at work on a book about veganism and capitalism that will be published by Beacon Press in 2022.



  • Cate Kennedy

    Cate Kennedy is the award-winning author of novels, poetry, short fiction, and a travel memoir. Her two short-story collections are Dark Roots (2006) and Like a House on Fire (2012), winner of the Queensland Award for best short-story collection and shortlisted for the inaugural Stella Prize. Her story “Cold Snap,” from Dark Roots, was published in the New Yorker as “Black Ice.” The Taste of River Water, Kennedy’s most recent poetry collection, won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Prize for poetry in 2012.



  • Photo: © Dan H. Fullerdiv>

    Jesse Lee Kercheval

    Jesse Lee Kercheval is the author of fifteen books of poetry and fiction and a translator, specializing in Uruguayan poetry. Recent books include The Invisible Bridge: Selected Poems of Circe Maia and América invertida: An Anthology of Emerging Uruguayan Poets (reviewed here). She is the Zona Gale Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin.



  • Rita Keresztesi

    Rita Keresztesi is a professor in the Department of English as the University of Oklahoma. Her research and teaching focus is on African and African diaspora literary and cultural studies. Dr. Keresztesi was a Fulbright U.S. Scholar at l’Université Ouaga 1 Professeur Ki-Zerbo, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, during the academic year 2010–2011. She has been a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Alumni Ambassador since 2016. She is the author of the book Literary Black Power in the Caribbean: Fiction, Music and Film (Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2021); of Strangers at Home: American Ethnic Modernism between the World Wars (University of Nebraska Press, 2005/2009); and the co-editor (with Ellie Higgins and Dayna Oscherwitz) of the book The Western in the Global South (Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2015). Her recent publications focus on West African cinema and music and on Afro-Caribbean literature and culture.


  • Etgar Keret

    Israeli author Etgar Keret is known for his television and film work as well as his short stories and children’s book. Several of his stories have been graphically illustrated, and his work has been translated into sixteen different languages. His most recent collection of short stories, The Girl on the Fridge, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in April. Keret and his wife, Shira Geffen, codirected Meduzot (Jellyfish), which won the Caméra d’Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival as well as two other directorial awards. The movie Wristcutters, now available on DVD, is based on Keret’s story “Kneller’s Happy Campers.” Keret currently resides in Tel Aviv with his wife and son. For more Keret fiction, look for “The Pricking” in our next issue, plus an exclusive interview.



  • Ziad Khadash

    Ziad Khadash was born in Jerusalem and lives in Jalazon Refugee Camp. He is the author of twelve books. He works as a teacher of creative writing in Palestine schools. The recipient of the State Prize, he was shortlisted for the Arab Story Forum Award in Kuwait.



  • Porochista Khakpour

    Porochista Khakpour is the author of the forthcoming memoir, Sick (HarperPerennial, 2017), and the novels The Last Illusion (2014) and Sons and Other Flammable Objects (2007). Her writing has appeared in Bookforum, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Slate, Salon, Spin, Elle, and many others. She is Writer in Residence at Bard College.



  • Hawre Khalid

    Born in Iraq’s contested city of Kirkuk, Hawre Khalid began his photojournalism career during the early years of the United States’ invasion of Iraq. His photographs have appeared in the New York Times, Time, National Geographic, and Washington Post, among many other publications. His photography has been exhibited worldwide, but Through the Smoke, Behind the Curtain (Kashkul, 2019) was his first solo show in Kurdistan.



  • Taha Khalil

    Taha Khalil is a writer, painter, and intellectual from Syria. Today he hosts a regular television program on Ronahi TV in Qamishlo and is one of the Rojava Centre for Strategic Studies’ three directors.



  • Yousef Khanfar

    An award-winning Palestinian author, Yousef Khanfar has published three books, is featured globally in many publications, and is listed as one of the world’s top photographers. He has received appreciation from the White House, US Supreme Court, the UK’s House of Lords, and beyond. The Fulbright Center for Peace in Washington, DC, selected his book to help celebrate the Global Symposium of Peaceful Nations. He was selected as Artist of the Year to promote literacy with UNICEF, and the Palestine mission to the United Nations honored him for “appreciation of his extraordinary service to promoting peace and justice in Palestine through art.”



  • Photo by Kevin Plattdiv>

    Semyon Khanin

    Semyon Khanin was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1970. He is the author of two collections of poetry in Russian, Tol'ko chto (2003; Just now) and Opushchennye podrobnosti(2008; Missed details). His poetry has been translated into Latvian, English, Czech, German, Italian, Swedish, Estonian, and Ukranian. He is a participant in the literary project Orbita and editor of the almanac by the same name.



  • Oleksandr Khodakivsky

    Oleksandr Khodakivsky is the author of a book of selected poems and essays, Lubvi Molchanie Lobovoe (2019). He lives in Kharkiv.


  • Maya Khosla

    Maya Khosla received the Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize for Keel Bone (2003) and awards from Poets & Writers, the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, and the Headlands Center for the Arts. Her poetry has appeared in Fog and Wood Smoke, Water: Culture, Politics, Management, and various journals, including Poem, Prairie Schooner, and Wisconsin Review. New poems are forthcoming in The Harper Collins Anthology of English Poetry by Indians.



  • Photo by Keiko Onodadiv>

    Shuri Kido

    Shuri Kido has been a leading poet for more than thirty years on the Japanese poetry scene, and his book of poems in English, Names and Rivers, will be published in 2023 by Copper Canyon.


  • Max Kidruk

    Max Kidruk has written several travelogues and technothrillers, including Bot



  • Kike

    Kike (pseudonym of Enrique Ferrari; b. 1972, Buenos Aires) is working on his sixth novel. A contributor to various literary journals such as Sudestada, Marea Popular, Visión, and Fiat Lux (Spain), he regularly writes for the Metrodelegados newspaper and his worker union.



  • Kim Seung Hee

    Kim Seung Hee (b. 1952) earned her BA, MA, and PhD degrees from Sogang University, Seoul, and recently retired from the Korean Department there. In addition to two volumes of fiction, she has published ten volumes of poetry. She is widely admired as a feminist surrealist and has received several major awards. Her volume “Pots Bobbing” has been published in English as Walking on a Washing-Line (Cornell).



  • Kim Kyŏnguk

    Kim Kyŏnguk (b. 1971, Kwangju, South Korea) earned his bachelor’s in English and master’s in Korean literature from Seoul National University. Since his debut story, “An Outsider,” won the Writer’s World prize for best new writer in 1993, Kim has published six story collections and five novels. One of the most prolific writers and astute observers of contemporary life in South Korea, Kim has received numerous prestigious literary awards such as the Hyŏndae and the Tongin prizes. WLT’s brief conversation with Kim appears in the January 2013 issue.



  • Photo by Wendy Kinselladiv>

    John Kinsella

    John Kinsella’s most recent volumes of poetry include Drowning in Wheat: Selected Poems, 1980–2015 (Picador, 2016), Insomnia (W.W. Norton, 2020), and Brimstone: Villanelles (Arc, 2020). His new memoir is Displaced: A Rural Life (Transit Lounge, 2020). The fourth volume of a poetry collaboration with Kwame Dawes, In the Name of Our Families, appeared with Peepal Tree in 2020. He is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge University, and emeritus professor of literature and environment at Curtin University, Western Australia.



  • Ali Kinsella

    Ali Kinsella has been translating from Ukrainian for seven years; her published works include essays, poetry, monographs, and film subtitles. She holds a Master’s degree in Slavic Studies from Columbia University, where she focused on Eastern European history and literature.



  • Naveen Kishore

    Naveen Kishore (b. 1953) is a theatre lighting designer, photographer, filmmaker, poet, and publisher of Seagull Books. Recipient of the Goethe Medal and the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, he was recently awarded the Ottaway Award for the Promotion of International Literature (2021) and the first Cesare De Michelis Award (2022). Kishore has had his poems published with Scroll.in, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Another Chicago Magazine, RIC Journal, Gargoyle, Poetry at Sangam, Sylph Editions, London, Gazebo Books, Australia, and Speaking Tiger Delhi, amongst others, and recently published his first book of poems, Knotted Grief. Kishore lives and works in Calcutta, India.



  • Lucas Klein

    Lucas Klein, former radio DJ and union organizer, is a writer, translator, and editor whose work has appeared in Jacket, Rain Taxi, CLEAR, and PMLA, and from Fordham, Black Widow, and New Directions. An assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong, his translation Notes on the Mosquito: Selected Poems of Xi Chuan 西川 won the 2013 Lucien Stryk Prize and was shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award in poetry (see xichuanpoetry.com). He is translating Tang dynasty poet Li Shangyin 李商隱 and seminal contemporary poet Mang Ke 芒克.



  • Photo: Sofie Amalie Klougartdiv>

    Josefine Klougart

    Josefine Klougart, hailed as “one of the most important writers, not just of her generation, but of her time,” is the author of four groundbreaking and best-selling novels, two of which have been nominated for Scandinavia’s most prestigious literary award, the Nordic Council Literature Prize.



  • Olja Knežević

    Born in Podgorica, Montenegro, Olja Knežević graduated from Capistrano Valley High school in California. She has a BA in English language and literature from the University of Belgrade and an MA in creative writing from Birkbeck College in London. She lived in London for ten years before moving to Zagreb, Croatia, where she currently lives with her family. She is the author of two novels and one book of autobiographical short stories.



  • Sabina Knight

    Sabina Knight 桑稟華 is author of The Heart of Time (2006) and Chinese Literature: A Very Short Introduction (2012, translated into three languages). Knight teaches comparative literature at Smith College. She is also a translator, a speaker on Chinese literature, and a fellow in the NCUSCR’s Public Intellectuals Program. 


  • Erwin Koch

    Erwin Koch, the author of seven books, is a Swiss journalist. He is the two-time recipient of the Egon Erwin Kisch Prize for German-language journalism (1988 and 1996); his carefully constructed, dystopian first novel, Sara tanzt (Sara dances), was awarded the Mara Cassens Prize for the best first novel of 2003. Notable among his works are the riveting novel Der Flambeur (The flimflam flambeur), based on the difficult life of a Swiss-German entrepreneur, and the finely wrought journalistic collection Vor der Tagesschau, an einem späten Sonntagnachmittag (Late Sunday afternoon, just before the news). His most recent publication is a collaborative work about a Swiss monastery with the photographer Giorgio von Arb.