Introduction to the Special Issue

Lvovich is a writer and scholar of multilingualism and of translingual literature. She teaches at the City University of New York (Kingsborough Community College) and divides her loyalties between academic and creative writing. Among her publications is a book of autobiographical narratives, The Multilingual Self, followed by more than a dozen creative nonfiction pieces and innovative interdisciplinary essays on multilingual identity and creativity. Among her latest publications are: "The Gift: Synesthesia in Translingual Texts" and "Translingual Identity and Art: Marc Chagall's Stride through the Gates of Janus". For the last decade she has been organizing panels and seminars on literary translingualism at international conferences, guest editing academic journals (with Steven Kellman), and lecturing on the topic internationally (e.g., a series of lectures on the topic as a visiting professor at École Normale Supérieure, Paris, France). She was a lead organizer of the very first symposium on translingual literature "Writing the Stepmother Tongue" and a recipient of several CUNY Chancellor Fellowships and other awards for her research on multilingualism, exile, and creativity in literature and the arts.

Kellman is a professor of comparative literature at the University of Texas at San Antonio. His books include The Restless Ilan Stavans: Outsider on the Inside (Pittsburgh), Redemption: The Life of Henry Roth (Norton), The Translingual Imagination (Nebraska), The Plague: Fiction and Resistance (Twayne); Loving Reading: Erotics of the Text (Archon); and The Self‑Begetting Novel (Columbia).