Cid Corman (1924-2004), was a poet, editor, and translator, and author of over 100 publications. Born in Roxbury, MA, he received his bachelor’s degree from Tufts University and went on to graduate work at University of Michigan and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, though he did not complete his studies at either. In 1951, he founded Origin, a poetry magazine that published Robert Creeley, Denise Levertov, and Louis Zukofsky, among many others, and ran Origin Press. In 1958 he moved to Kyoto, Japan, where he met and married Konishi Shizumi. Although he returned to Boston twice, he spent most of the rest of his life in in Kyoto, until his death in 2004.

John Martone is a poet and publisher of journals and small presses such as tel-let (1980’s-early 2000’s) and Otata (2015-current) as well as the personal imprints dogwood and honeysuckle (through early 2000’s) and samuddo/ocean. His books include Ocean Vows (Copper Beech Press, 1983), dogwood and honeysuckle (Red Moon Press, 1997), Ksana (Red Moon Press, 2010).