N

Biographies of Contributors

N

SAYYIDA NAFISA BINT AL-HASAN 144/5-208 AH (762-824 CE) was the great-granddaughter of al-Hasan, the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson. She, along with a number of other descendants of the Prophet, became important to Egyptian Sufis and other pious Muslims wishing to visit the graves of the holy dead, both because her tomb is in Cairo, and because, according to legend, she separated from her husband (who moved back to Arabia) in order to assist and bless the inhabitants of Egypt. Shi’i Muslims also considered her holy because of her lineage. Some scholars have cast doubt on the authenticity of her tomb and the legends linking her to Egypt, since the earliest reference to her living there come from a Shi’ite source dated 150 years after her death. Authentic or not, tales of her life and miracles were regularly recorded in tabaqat literature (collections of biographies of individuals, often “holy,” connected to a specific religious movements or schools within Islam), chronicles, and Arabic epic literature even into the modern era.

BETTY ROSE NAGLE is Associate Professor in the Department of Classical Studies at Indiana University. Her translation of the Silvae, a collection of occasional poetry by the 1st century CE Roman poet Statius, is forthcoming from Indiana University Press in Spring 2004. She has also translated the Fasti, a poem about the Roman calendar of religious festivals by the Augustan Age Roman poet Ovid and has published a a monograph on the poetry Ovid wrote from exile on the Black Sea, as well as articles on narrative strategies in Ovid’s masterwork, the Metamorphoses.

HASSAN NAJMI, a prominent Moroccan poet, scholar, and critic, was born in Ben Ahmed in 1960 and now resides in Rabat, where he currently works as Directeur du livre at the Ministry of Culture. Najmi holds a PhD in Arabic language and literature and has served as president of the Moroccan Writers Union. He has published three novels, a number of literary studies, and numerous poetry collections. He has himself translated many poets into Arabic, including the Italian Giuseppe Ungaretti, the Greek Yiannis Ritsos, and the Russian Anna Akhmatova.

SÅŒSEKI NATSUME (Natsume Saœseki, in the Japanese order; 1867-1916) is, perhaps the pre-eminent early-modern writer in Japan. Although he came to his role as author late in life, his influence has been significant over the century since his death. Saœseki may be best known and remembered for his novels, but he was also active in numerous other literary genres as well, from literary criticism to translation to poetry. In this last, he wrote in many forms: traditional Japanese poems such as waka and haiku, as well as kanshi, poems in classical Chinese. He also wrote a handful of poems in “new style.”

MICHAEL M. NAYDAN is Woskob Family Professor of Ukrainian Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. His latest book is a translation of Ukrainian poet Bohdan Ihor Antonych’s selected poetry, Ecstasies and Elegies (2010, Bucknell University Press). He is currently completing an anthology of contemporary Ukrainian women prose writers in translation.

YURII NECHIPORENKO holds advanced degrees in Physics and Biophysics from Moscow University, where he is now a professor of Physics. Since 1988 he has published fiction for children, essays, novels, and hundreds of critical essays and reviews. He is an editor and contributor to several literary publications. He is the publisher of the internet journal Electronic Pampas’s http://www.epampa.narod.ru/index.html, and Editor-in-Chief of the Internet journal Russkaya Zhizn (Russian Life), http://www.hrono.ru/proekty/ru/index.html. His fiction and essays have been translated into Serbian and Ukrainian.

MINA NEDIALKOVA Born in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1974, she attended a Russian language elementary and junior high school. She has studied at the Sorbonne and is now at Smith College.

GIAMPIERO NERI (1927- ) was born in Erba, Italy and lives in Milan. A leading exponent of the Milan school, he has published seven volumes of poetry: L’aspetto occidentale del vestito (The Western Look of Dress) (Milan: Guanda, 1976), Liceo (High School) (Milan-Palermo: Acquario-Guanda, 1986), Dallo stesso luogo (From the Same Place) (Milan: Coliseum, 1992), Teatro naturale (Natural Theater) (Milan: Mondadori, 1998), Erbario con figure (Herbarium with Pictures) (Como: Lietocolle, 2000), Finale (Como: Dialogolibri, 2002), Armi e mestieri (Weapons and Trades) (Milan: Mondadori, 2004). A collection of his prose writings will be published by Lietocolle: La serie dei fatti, quindici prose di Giampiero Neri (The Series of Facts, Fifteen Prose Writings by Giampiero Neri), edited and with an introduction by Victoria Surliuga.

JOAO SIMÕES LOPES NETO (1865-1916) was born near Pelotas, a city of great wealth and importance in the southernmost state of the southern region of Brazil (Rio Grande do Sul) throughout the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century. A prominent figure in his hometown, after becoming involved in a number of projects aimed at boosting the economy of his beloved Pelotas, as well as creating plays, writing essays and participating in committees and boards of clubs and associations, he dedicated his time to writing stories of gaucho life as part of a project he determined would tell the history of the state of Rio Grande do Sul. O Cancioneiro Guasca, Contos Gauchescos e Lendas do Sul, and Os Casos do Romualdo form part of this project.

ANDY NEWCOMB often co-translates Russian poetry with Nina Kossman. He collaborated with Kossman on some of the Tsvetaeva translation in Poem of the End.

KAREN NEWMAN is a Professor of Comparative Literature and English at Brown University, and is a comparatist working in early modern literature and culture, English, French, and Italian. Her books include Shakespeare’s Rhetoric of Comic Character, Fashioning Femininity and English Renaissance Drama, and most recently, Fetal Positions: Individualism, Science, Visuality. She has also published articles on various Renaissance topics.

TEODORO NDJOCK NGANA was born in 1952 in Ilanga (Cameroon). Son of a farming family of Basaa origin, he is noted for his political work in the struggle for Cameroon independence. In 1972, he enrolled in the University of Yaoundé, where he began to write poetry that dealt with social issues. He lives with his Italian wife and daughter in Rome. His poetry has appeared in a number of anthologies, including Quaderno africano I, in the Cittadini della Poesia series (Florence: Loggia de’ Lanzi, 1998). He has published a collection of verse entitled Nhindo Nero (Rome: Anterem, 1994), and the poem “Il segreto della capanna” (Rome: Lilith, 1998), with parallel text by the author himself in the Basaa language.

PIERRE NGIJOL NGIJOL, a Camerounian, holds a PhD in African literature from the University of Bordeaux, France. He is a retired Professore of African languages and literaturees and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Yaounde, Cameroon. One of his greatest achievements was his pioneering work in making Basaa oral literature accessible to a wider audience by translating it into French. His initiative culminated in the collection, transcription and translation of the epic of Bon ba Hiton, as narrated by the bard Njib Njib of Matomb. In 1980, his dissertation was published in Cameroon as Les Fils de Hitong, by the Centre d’Edition et de Production Pour l’Enseignement et la Recherche (CEPER).

NGUYEN THI AM is a contemporary Vietnamese author. She was born in Long An, southern Vietnam, studied in the former Soviet Union, and currently lives in Saigon. Her short story “Sleeping on Earth” has been translated into English and published in Grand Street, volume 12, no. 4 (1994), and it was analyzed by Edith M. Vasquez, in an article entitled “Pro- Aesthetic Feminist Connection: A Chicana Reading of Nguyen Thi Am’s ‘Sleeping on Earth,’” published in The Review of Vietnamese Studies (2001). Many of her stories can be categorized under minimalistic fiction. She prefers simplicity in her narrative. Nguyen represents an emerging voice in Vietnamese women’s literature who deviates from the traditional writing style practiced by former, well-established Vietnamese female writers.

SOPHIA NIKOLAÏDOU was born in Thessaloniki in 1968. She studied classical literature and lives and works in Thessaloniki. She has published two short story collections, One Blonde Well Done (Athens: Kedros, 1997) and Fear Will Get to You and You’ll Be Alone (Athens: Kedros, 1999) both minimalist in style, followed by a novel, The Planet Prespa. A Grand Story (Athens: Kedros, 2002), which combines elements of the detective thriller, the gothic romance, and the campus novel.

PASCHALIS NIKOLAOU‘s reviews and translations have appeared in The London Magazine, MPT, Notre Dame Review, Parnassus, among others. He is reviews editor of the translation journal mTm. Articles on aspects of translation tudies and especially on the relationship between literary translation and creative writing have appeared in journals and edited volumes. With Maria-Venetia Kyritsi he co-edited Translating Selves: Experience and Identity between Langages and Literatures (Continuum, 2008) and, with Richard Berengarten, the Selected Poems of Nasos Vayenas (Anvil 2010) — a volume of shortlisted for the Criticos Prize. He currently lives in Corfu, where he teaches literary translation at the Ionian University.

RACHID NINI is a Moroccan journalist and writer who has spent time researching his account of “illegal” migrant workers in Spain and France during the 1990s, by living and working amongst them. His work has been translated into Spanish and French, but this is his first publication in English translation. He is now editor of the Moroccan daily Almassaa.

JOAO GILBERTO NOLL was born in Porto Alegre in 1946 and died March 2017. He has published over a dozen works of fiction. In 1980, he published the short story collection O cego e a dancarina, for which he was awarded several prizes, including recognition as ‘the literary sensation of the year’ by the Asociaciacao Paulista de Criticos de Arte and ‘Ficcao do ano’ by the Instituto Nacional do Livro, and the Jabuti Prize by the Camara Brasileira do Livro. Some of his fiction has been adapted into films. In addition to having his work featured in the book Os cem melhores contos brasileros do seculo in 2000, Noll was a writer in residence at the University of Berkeley, California and a visiting professor at King’s College in London. His novels include Bandoleiros (1985), Hotel Atlantico (1989), Harmada (1993, winner of that year’s Jabuti Prize), A ceu aberto (1996, Jabuti Prize), Berkeley in Bellagio (2002, a finalist for the Telecom Prize), Lorde(2004, Jabuti Prize), Acenos e afagos (2008, second place for the Portugal Telecom Prize), and Solidao continental (2012).

DIMITRIS NOLLAS is one of the most accomplished fiction writers in Greece. His ten books include short story collections, novellas, and The Sepulcher by the Sea, a novel that won the 1993 Greek State Prize for Fiction. A selection from his short fiction has appeared in French (Éditions Hartier).

OLGA NOVO (Vilarmao, 1975) has a BA in Galician and Portuguese Language and Literature and is a secondary school teacher. She is the author of a large number of poetry collections and essays. Her essay on poetry in Catalán, Basque and Galician, Spain, was published in Atlanta in 2003.

MWENDA NTARANGWI is Director of the St. Lawrence University study abroad program in Kenya. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Illinois and has published widely in the areas of gender, popular culture, and study abroad. His current interests include teaching and research in the social sciences in Africa. Ntarangwi’s book Gender, Identity and Performance is forthcoming from Africa World Press, New Jersey.

RICHARD BRUCE NUGENT (1906-1987) Artist and key figure of the Harlem Renaissance, he came to New York in 1923 after meeting Langston Hughes in Washington and soon put his eclectic artistic talent to work both as a writer/poet and as an illustrator. His work became more widely known after Smoke, Lilies & Jade appeared the first (and only) issue of the mythic literary magazine Fire was published in 1926.

SLAVA NURGALIEV was born in Moscow, 1964. Twenty years later he graduated from the Moscow Institute of Culture. After serving in the Soviet Army as a Russian-German interpreter he became a scholar and defended a PhD thesis on the German Book in 18th-century Russia. He moved to Germany in 1997 and now divides his time between Russia where he teaches German, and Austria where he teaches Russian and theatre. He has also been involved in theatre production, writing poetry and prose, and even playing in a band where he performs his own songs.