Tarjei Vesaas (1897-1970), eldest son of a farming family in Telemark, Norway, is among the giants of twentieth-century Scandinavian literature. He won the Venice Prize in 1952 for a volume of stories and the Nordic Council Prize in 1963 for his novel Is-slottet (The Ice Palace). In addition to over twenty-five volumes of fiction, he published five collections of poetry during his lifetime; a sixth appeared posthumously.
Roger Greenwald is Senior Lecturer and Director of the Writing Centre at Innis College in the University of Toronto. His translation The Silence Afterwards:Selected Poems of Rolf Jacobsen (Princeton) won the F. R. Scott Translation Prize.