Khal Torabully, a francophone writer from Mauritius, is an essayist, film director, and semiologist. Author of over twenty-five books, he has given voice to indentured workers who were brought by ship from China and India to work the sugarcane fields in the years after slavery was abolished. These workers either remained in the tiny island nation or were transported to other former British and French colonies. Torabully has re-visioned, re-imagined, and redefined the derogatory term coolie to emphasize the richness of transcultural lives. He coined coolitude in much the same way that Aimé Césaire coined negritude. (updated 10/2018)
Nancy Naomi Carlson, poet, translator, editor, and essayist, has published nine books, six of them translations. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Maryland Council for the Arts, and was a finalist for the Best Translated Book Award and CLMP’s Firecracker Poetry Award. Her work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Georgia Review, AGNI, Poetry, and elsewhere. (updated 10/2018)