Translation
Ina Pfitzner
Ina Pfitzner is a translator, author, and teacher in Berlin, Germany, with a Ph.D. in French and Comparative Literature from Louisiana State University in 2001. Her academic essays and reviews on exile, translation, and writing have been published in Quo Vadis, Romania?, Sites, Bucknell Review, Manhattan Review, etc. She contributed the entry on Boris Vian to the Encyclopedia of Erotic Literature in 2006, and she has an article on New Orleans and Katrina forthcoming in Romanice. Her translations of essays in art studies, philosophy, and education were printed in various volumes in Germany and the USA. Her translations of poetry by Wolf Biermann and Boris Vian appeared in Chelsea, Metamorphoses, and Exquisite Corpse. More translations of Aldona Gustas’ poems are forthcoming in Absinthe. She has hosted a literary salon in Berlin since 2005 and her website is: www.inapfitzner.net.
Aldona Gustas
German poet Aldona Gustas spent her childhood in Karceviskiu, Lithuania (born in 1932), but has lived in West Berlin since the end of World War Two. She started writing in 1957 and then discovered her gift of drawing in 1970. In 1972, she initiated the Malerpoeten (painter/poets) group in West Berlin, with the likes of Günter Grass and others, and her abstract, witty and gentle drawings have accompanied many of her works. Publications include volumes of poetry such as Worterotik (1971), Puppenruhe (1977), Asyl im Gedicht (2001), Eine Welle eine Muschel oder Venus persönlich (1979), Luftkäfige (1980) and books of aphorisms such as Sphinxfrauen, Symbiosefrauen, Torsofrauen. She has also edited several anthologies of erotic poetry and contributed to some 100 anthologies herself. Her latest volume Berliner TagebuchGedichte (2006) is a lyrical diary, poetically documenting her wanderings through the city. Aldona Gustas is recipient of the Rahel Varnhagen von Ense Medal (1997), the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (1999) and the Medal of the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas (2006).