The author of more than thirty-five books, many translated into multiple languages, Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1965. His studies with Trappist monk Thomas Merton and his involvement with the Sandinista movement in his home country have informed his writing and political activism. He lives in Managua, Nicaragua, where he is vice president of Casa de los Tres Mundos, a literary and cultural organisation.||Poet, journalist, and musician John Lyons has translated previous works of Ernesto Cardenal and other Spanish-language poets. He lives in São Carlos, Brazil.|Anne Waldman, poet, performer, professor, cultural activist, holds the lineages of The New American Poetry in her DNA. She is the author of numerous books of poetry including the mini - classic Fast Speaking Woman and the recent volumes In the Room of Never Grieve and the meditative Structure of the World Compared to a Bubble. She is also the editor of The Beat Book, and co-editor of Civil Disobediences: Poetics & Politics in Action. She is the chair of the Summer Writing Program at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, faculty for New England College's low-residency MFA, and the pedagogical director for Study Abroad on the Bowery in New York City. Her extensive Archive resides at the Hatcher Graduate Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Allen Ginsberg has called her his ""spiritual wife.
