Christina Illias-Zarifopol is associate professor of classical studies and Romanian language and culture at Indiana University. Her translations with Adam J. Sorkin of poems by Marta Petreu won the 1999 Kenneth Rexroth Memorial Translation Prize; selected poems have been published in several literary journals including Mississippi Review, Salt Hill, Massachusetts Review, The Alembic, Paper Street, The Literary Review and Beacons. She has published two books: a volume of previously unknown letters of Mihai Eminescu, Romania's national poet, New Correspondence: Mihai Eminescu-Veronica Micle, (Polirom, 2000), and a study of Pliny the Younger's letters Portrait of a Pragmatic Hero: Narrative Strategies of Self-Presentation in Pliny's Letters (Polirom, 2000).