Russell Scott Valentino is professor of Slavic and comparative literature and chair of the Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature at the University of Iowa. He has published a monograph on nineteenth-century Russian literature and seven book-length literary translations from Italian, Croatian, and Russian. His essays, translated fiction, and poetry have appeared in journals such as The Iowa Review, Two Lines, POROI, Circumference, Asia, Modern Fiction Studies, Slavic Review, and 91st Meridian. He is the recipient of a 2002 NEA Literature Fellowship and a 2004 Howard Foundation fellowship, both for literary translation, as well as two Fulbright research awards to Croatia. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of Autumn Hill Books and in fall 2009 will become Editor of The Iowa Review. He teaches in the Translation Workshop at the University of Iowa.