Brief Accident of Light

Rhina P. Espaillat, born in the Dominican Republic in 1932, has lived in the U.S. since 1939 and taught English in New York City at the high school level. She has been writing since childhood and has published twelve full-length books and five chapbooks, comprising poetry, essays, and short stories in both English and her native Spanish. She has also published work in numerous anthologies and magazines, as well as translations, most notably of Robert Frost into Spanish and St. John of the Cross into English. Her awards include the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, the Richard Wilbur Award, The Nemerov Prize, the May Sarton Award, and several from the Poetry Society of America, the New England Poetry Club, and the Ministry of Culture of the Dominican Republic.

Alfred Nicol’s most recent collection of poetry, Animal Psalms, was published in 2016 by Able Muse Press. He has published two other collections, Elegy for Everyone (2009), and Winter Light, which received the 2004 Richard Wilbur Award. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The New England Review, Dark Horse, First Things, Commonweal, The Formalist, The Hopkins Review, Measure and elsewhere. His awards include The Daniel Varoujan Award of the New England Poetry Club, The Robert Frost Foundation Poetry Award, and the Willis Barnstone Translation Award. Nicol’s poem “Addendum” was included in the 2018 edition of The Best American Poetry. 

Kate Sullivan likes to fiddle around with music, words, and pictures. Her setting of Pinocchio for string quartet, narrator, hammer, chisel, and musical saw was premiered by The Providence Quartet. Her Sweeney Astray, for chamber orchestra, tenor and a chorus of trees, tells the medieval Irish tale of a mad king transformed into a bird. Her Mother’s Day Fugue was premiered by The Kremlin Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. She has written two picture books, On Linden Square (Sleeping Bear Press) and What Do You Hear? (Schiffer Publishing). Her paintings are hanging in a number of private collections.