Find your favorite authors featured in WLT or browse the entire list.
Eleni Kefala
Eleni Kefala has published two books of poetry. She has been a finalist for the Diavazo First-Time Author Award (Greece) and winner of the State Prize for Poetry (Cyprus). She was a juror for the 2022 Neustadt Prize, and she teaches Latin American and comparative literature at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.
Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp
Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp is a literary translator—working from Arabic, Russian, and German into English—whose work has been shortlisted for the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize, the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize, and the GLLI Translated YA Book Prize. She is co-editor of World Kid Lit blog, and she champions world literature for young people in schools and online, especially during #WorldKidLitMonth.
Cate Kennedy
Cate Kennedy is the award-winning author of novels, poetry, short fiction, and a travel memoir. Her two short-story collections are Dark Roots (2006) and Like a House on Fire (2012), winner of the Queensland Award for best short-story collection and shortlisted for the inaugural Stella Prize. Her story “Cold Snap,” from Dark Roots, was published in the New Yorker as “Black Ice.” The Taste of River Water, Kennedy’s most recent poetry collection, won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Prize for poetry in 2012.
Photo: © Dan H. Fullerdiv>Jesse Lee Kercheval
Jesse Lee Kercheval is the author of fifteen books of poetry and fiction and a translator, specializing in Uruguayan poetry. Recent books include The Invisible Bridge: Selected Poems of Circe Maia and América invertida: An Anthology of Emerging Uruguayan Poets (reviewed here). She is the Zona Gale Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin.
Rita Keresztesi
Rita Keresztesi is a professor in the Department of English as the University of Oklahoma. Her research and teaching focus is on African and African diaspora literary and cultural studies. Dr. Keresztesi was a Fulbright U.S. Scholar at l’Université Ouaga 1 Professeur Ki-Zerbo, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, during the academic year 2010–2011. She has been a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Alumni Ambassador since 2016. She is the author of the book Literary Black Power in the Caribbean: Fiction, Music and Film (Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2021); of Strangers at Home: American Ethnic Modernism between the World Wars (University of Nebraska Press, 2005/2009); and the co-editor (with Ellie Higgins and Dayna Oscherwitz) of the book The Western in the Global South (Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2015). Her recent publications focus on West African cinema and music and on Afro-Caribbean literature and culture.
Ziad Khadash
Ziad Khadash was born in Jerusalem and lives in Jalazon Refugee Camp. He is the author of twelve books. He works as a teacher of creative writing in Palestine schools. The recipient of the State Prize, he was shortlisted for the Arab Story Forum Award in Kuwait.
Porochista Khakpour
Porochista Khakpour is the author of the forthcoming memoir, Sick (HarperPerennial, 2017), and the novels The Last Illusion (2014) and Sons and Other Flammable Objects (2007). Her writing has appeared in Bookforum, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Slate, Salon, Spin, Elle, and many others. She is Writer in Residence at Bard College.
Hawre Khalid
Born in Iraq’s contested city of Kirkuk, Hawre Khalid began his photojournalism career during the early years of the United States’ invasion of Iraq. His photographs have appeared in the New York Times, Time, National Geographic, and Washington Post, among many other publications. His photography has been exhibited worldwide, but Through the Smoke, Behind the Curtain (Kashkul, 2019) was his first solo show in Kurdistan.
Taha Khalil
Taha Khalil is a writer, painter, and intellectual from Syria. Today he hosts a regular television program on Ronahi TV in Qamishlo and is one of the Rojava Centre for Strategic Studies’ three directors.
Yousef Khanfar
An award-winning Palestinian author, Yousef Khanfar has published three books, is featured globally in many publications, and is listed as one of the world’s top photographers. He has received appreciation from the White House, US Supreme Court, the UK’s House of Lords, and beyond. The Fulbright Center for Peace in Washington, DC, selected his book to help celebrate the Global Symposium of Peaceful Nations. He was selected as Artist of the Year to promote literacy with UNICEF, and the Palestine mission to the United Nations honored him for “appreciation of his extraordinary service to promoting peace and justice in Palestine through art.”
Photo by Kevin Plattdiv>Semyon Khanin
Semyon Khanin was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1970. He is the author of two collections of poetry in Russian, Tol'ko chto (2003; Just now) and Opushchennye podrobnosti(2008; Missed details). His poetry has been translated into Latvian, English, Czech, German, Italian, Swedish, Estonian, and Ukranian. He is a participant in the literary project Orbita and editor of the almanac by the same name.
Oleksandr Khodakivsky
Oleksandr Khodakivsky is the author of a book of selected poems and essays, Lubvi Molchanie Lobovoe (2019). He lives in Kharkiv.
Photo by Keiko Onodadiv>Shuri Kido
Shuri Kido has been a leading poet for more than thirty years on the Japanese poetry scene, and his book of poems in English, Names and Rivers, will be published in 2023 by Copper Canyon.
Kike
Kike (pseudonym of Enrique Ferrari; b. 1972, Buenos Aires) is working on his sixth novel. A contributor to various literary journals such as Sudestada, Marea Popular, Visión, and Fiat Lux (Spain), he regularly writes for the Metrodelegados newspaper and his worker union.
Kim Seung Hee
Kim Seung Hee (b. 1952) earned her BA, MA, and PhD degrees from Sogang University, Seoul, and recently retired from the Korean Department there. In addition to two volumes of fiction, she has published ten volumes of poetry. She is widely admired as a feminist surrealist and has received several major awards. Her volume “Pots Bobbing” has been published in English as Walking on a Washing-Line (Cornell).
Kim Kyŏnguk
Kim Kyŏnguk (b. 1971, Kwangju, South Korea) earned his bachelor’s in English and master’s in Korean literature from Seoul National University. Since his debut story, “An Outsider,” won the Writer’s World prize for best new writer in 1993, Kim has published six story collections and five novels. One of the most prolific writers and astute observers of contemporary life in South Korea, Kim has received numerous prestigious literary awards such as the Hyŏndae and the Tongin prizes. WLT’s brief conversation with Kim appears in the January 2013 issue.
Photo by Wendy Kinselladiv>John Kinsella
John Kinsella’s most recent volumes of poetry include Drowning in Wheat: Selected Poems, 1980–2015 (Picador, 2016), Insomnia (W.W. Norton, 2020), and Brimstone: Villanelles (Arc, 2020). His new memoir is Displaced: A Rural Life (Transit Lounge, 2020). The fourth volume of a poetry collaboration with Kwame Dawes, In the Name of Our Families, appeared with Peepal Tree in 2020. He is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge University, and emeritus professor of literature and environment at Curtin University, Western Australia.
Ali Kinsella
Ali Kinsella has been translating from Ukrainian for seven years; her published works include essays, poetry, monographs, and film subtitles. She holds a Master’s degree in Slavic Studies from Columbia University, where she focused on Eastern European history and literature.
Naveen Kishore
Naveen Kishore (b. 1953) is a theatre lighting designer, photographer, filmmaker, poet, and publisher of Seagull Books. Recipient of the Goethe Medal and the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, he was recently awarded the Ottaway Award for the Promotion of International Literature (2021) and the first Cesare De Michelis Award (2022). Kishore has had his poems published with Scroll.in, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Another Chicago Magazine, RIC Journal, Gargoyle, Poetry at Sangam, Sylph Editions, London, Gazebo Books, Australia, and Speaking Tiger Delhi, amongst others, and recently published his first book of poems, Knotted Grief. Kishore lives and works in Calcutta, India.
Lucas Klein
Lucas Klein, former radio DJ and union organizer, is a writer, translator, and editor whose work has appeared in Jacket, Rain Taxi, CLEAR, and PMLA, and from Fordham, Black Widow, and New Directions. An assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong, his translation Notes on the Mosquito: Selected Poems of Xi Chuan 西川 won the 2013 Lucien Stryk Prize and was shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award in poetry (see xichuanpoetry.com). He is translating Tang dynasty poet Li Shangyin 李商隱 and seminal contemporary poet Mang Ke 芒克.
Photo: Sofie Amalie Klougartdiv>Josefine Klougart
Josefine Klougart, hailed as “one of the most important writers, not just of her generation, but of her time,” is the author of four groundbreaking and best-selling novels, two of which have been nominated for Scandinavia’s most prestigious literary award, the Nordic Council Literature Prize.
Olja Knežević
Born in Podgorica, Montenegro, Olja Knežević graduated from Capistrano Valley High school in California. She has a BA in English language and literature from the University of Belgrade and an MA in creative writing from Birkbeck College in London. She lived in London for ten years before moving to Zagreb, Croatia, where she currently lives with her family. She is the author of two novels and one book of autobiographical short stories.
Sabina Knight
Sabina Knight 桑稟華 is author of The Heart of Time (2006) and Chinese Literature: A Very Short Introduction (2012, translated into three languages). Knight teaches comparative literature at Smith College. She is also a translator, a speaker on Chinese literature, and a fellow in the NCUSCR’s Public Intellectuals Program.
Ani Kokobobo
Ani Kokobobo is associate professor and chair of the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Languages and Literatures at the University of Kansas. Her writings have appeared with the Washington Post, LARB, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.