Born in Martinique in 1928, influenced by poet/politician Aime Cesaire, and educated at the Sorbonne in Paris, EDOUARD GLISSANT has emerged as one of the most influential postcolonial theorists, novelists, playwrights, and poets not only in the Caribbean but also in contemporary French literature. He has twice been a finalist for the Nobel Prize in Literature. His works include Poetics of Relation, Caribbean Discourse, Faulkner Mississippi, Collected Poems, and the novel The Ripening. He is currently Distinguished Professor of French at the Graduate Center, CUNY and lives in New York, Paris, and Martinique. NATHALIE STEPHENS, author of 16 books, translates between French and English.