Heather Valencia and Merle Bachman introduce the lives, works and indelible impact of Yiddish writer Sutzkever and Scottish poet Jacobs, with readings from recently published books of their poetry.

Heather Valencia was a lecturer in German language and literature at the University of Stirling. She began studying Yiddish in the 1980s, wrote her doctoral thesis on the poetry of Avrom Sutzkever, and has published widely on Sutzkever and other aspects of modern Yiddish literature, as well as translating Yiddish prose and poetry, and teaching Yiddish language in summer programmes and at her regular class in Edinburgh.

Merle L. Bachman is an American Jewish poet, scholar, and Professor of English at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. In addition to co-editing Nameless Country: Selected Poems of A. C. Jacobs, she has two full-length collections of her own poetry published by Shearsman Books in the UK (most recently, Blood Party) and a scholarly work published by Syracuse University, Recovering Yiddishland: Threshold Moments in American Literature.