Arno Schmidt (1914–1979) published over two dozen books of fiction, criticism, and translation in his lifetime. Along with Heinrich Böll and Günter grass, he is considered one of the most important and influential writers of postwar Germany; his magnum opus, Bottom’s Dream, is often likened to James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Schmidt grew up in Hamburg and Silesia, where his experience of the Second World War made him a lifelong opponent of war. As penniless “refugees from the East,” he and his wife Alice were relocated several times until, in 1958, they moved to the small village of Bargfeld in the Lüneburg Heath, where Schmidt finally found the peace he needed to work. He died of a stroke at the age of only 65.

John E. Woods won both the 1981 American Book Award and PEN award for his translation of Schmidt's Evening Edged in Gold and has published a new translation of Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks.

Esther Yi was born in Los Angeles in 1989 and currently lives in Leipzig, Germany. She is the author of To God (2026) and Y/N (2023).