Boris Poplavsky (1903–35) was born in Moscow and fled Russia with his family in the wake of the Revolution, passing through Constantinople and settling in Paris in 1921. He published one collection of poems, Flags (1931), before his death from an overdose at the age of 32. His novels Apollon Bezobrazov and Homeward from Heaven are now available in English translations by John Kopper and Bryan Karetnyk, respectively.

Boris Dralyuk is the author of My Hollywood and Other Poems (Paul Dry Books, 2022) and the translator of Isaac Babel, Andrey Kurkov, Maxim Osipov, and other authors. His poems, translations, and criticism have appeared in the NYRB, the TLS, The New Yorker, and elsewhere, and he is the recipient, most recently, of the 2022 Gregg Barrios Translation Prize from the National Book Critics Circle. Formerly editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books, he is currently an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Tulsa.