Sylvie Kandé is a critically acclaimed French-Senegalese poet and scholar who founded the program of Francophone Studies at New York University. She currently serves as a professor in the History & Philosophy department at SUNY Old Westbury, where she recently was a recipient of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities. Her three critically acclaimed poetry collections have all been published by Gallimard, one of the most prestigious publishers in France. Gestuaire (2016) the book from which this translation was drawn, was a recipient of the 2017 Prix Louise Labé and will be appearing in Nancy Naomi Carlson’s translation as Gestuary (Seagull Books, 2026).

Nancy Naomi Carlson won the 2022 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. Shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award and the Sarah Maguire Translation Prize, she was longlisted for the National Translation Award. Author of 5 titles and translator of eleven others, her poetry and translations have been noted in the New York Times. A recipient of grants from the NEA and the Albertine Foundation, she was decorated by the French government with the Academic Palms. Carlson is the Translations Editor for On the Seawall and the translator of When We Only Have the Earth (University of Nebraska Press: African Poetry Book Series, 2025), by Djiboutian writer Abdourahman A. Waberi.