Ariel Zinder was born in 1973 in Berkeley, California, where his Israeli father was completing a doctorate. Both his parents were raised in English-speaking environments, and so Zinder, an Israeli who has lived in Israel since the age of three, who grew up in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and writes his poetry in Hebrew, is bilingual. He lives in Jerusalem, is one of the founders of the Ketovet Group, and has been publishing poems and poetry translations since 1999. A teacher of literature and creative writing for youth and adults, Zinder is a postgraduate student in literary studies, specialising in medieval Hebrew poetry. He has been awarded the Israeli education ministry’s prize for young poets, and the Ruth Negev award for his first book.

Poet, dramatist and director Nano Shabtai was born in the small, secular center of Jerusalem to a large family (she is one of six children), where she attended the High School of the Arts, majoring in theatre. She studied acting and directing at the Kibbutz College in Tel Aviv, and completed the screenwriting track (with honours) at the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School. She has adapted works by Kundera, Ionesco and Chekhov for the stage, directing them at her college, at the avant-garde Performance Art Arena (HaZira), and the Khan Theater, respectively. Since 2005 she has worked as a fiction reader for an Israeli publishing house, and as a book editor and reviewer. Her first book of poems, The Iron Girl, was published in 2006, supported in part by the ACUM Prize to encourage young writers. This is her first appearance in English.

Shai Dotan was born in Eilat, the resort town at the southernmost tip of Israel, to French-speaking immigrants from Morocco, and now lives in Jerusalem, where he works as an economist in the public sector, and also moderates poetry workshops for youth and adults. His debut collection of poetry On the Verge won the Education Ministry Prize for first books. His latest, Poems I Didn’t Write, was published this year.