Sarah Kirsch was born in 1935 in Limlingerode and studied biology at the University of Halle. Her poems first appeared in East German magazines in the early 1960s. In 1976 she joined eleven other writers in protests against the expulsion from East Germany of the singer-poet Wolf Biermann. This led to her own expulsion from the Communist Party, and to her permanent move to West Germany. Sarah Kirsch passed away in 2013. Margitt Lehbert was born in Geneva, Switzerland, to German parents in 1957. She grew up in the United States and Germany, studied in Konstanz and Iowa City, and translates into German as well as English. In 2006 she founded Edition Rugerup, which publishes mostly poetry in translation. She lives in south Sweden.
