Feodor Swarovski was born in Moscow in 1971. He emigrated to Denmark in 1990 at the age of nineteen but returned to Moscow in 1997. He is a journalist who has worked for Russian television as well as print media. Swarovski's first book of poetry, Vse khotiat byt' robotami (2007; Everyone wants to be a robot), received the Moskovsky Schet prize and was short-listed for the Andrei Belyi prize. He was short-listed for the Andrei Belyi prize again in 2009 for his poetry collection Puteshestvenniki vo vremeni (Time travelers). Swarovski's poetry has been translated into English, Bulgarian, Danish, Polish, Slovenian, and Ukranian.

Stephanie Sandler is Professor of Slavic languages and literatures at Harvard University. Her most recent critical monograph was Commemorating Pushkin: Russia's Myth of a National Poet (2004). She has edited several collections of essays, including Rereading Russian Poetry (1999). Sandler collaborated with Genya Turovskaya in translating The Russian Version: Selected Poems of Elena Fanailova (2009) and is currently working on a book about contemporary Russian poetry.