Nan Watkins is a writer, translator, musician, and librarian. She holds degrees from Oberlin College and Johns Hopkins University, with further study at the University of Munich and the Academy of Music in Vienna. She worked as reference librarian at Western Carolina University and lives near Asheville, North Carolina. Her travel writing has appeared with Seal Press in Season of Adventure and A Woman Alone, along with her memoir, East Toward Dawn: A Woman’s Solo Journey Around the World, (also in Chinese). Her conversations with musicians, made together with Thomas Rain Crowe, are documented in Rare Birds (University Press of Mississippi). Her translations from the German include Erwin Eisch’s “Towards a Conception of Glass Art” (Eisch Retrospective, exhibition catalog), Karin Struck’s “Voluntary Death” (Dimension), and Christine Brückner’s “Sappho’s Farewell” (Oxygen). She translated Claire Goll’s poems in 10,000 Dawns: The Love Poems of Yvan & Claire Goll (White Pine Press) and has published translations of Yvan Goll’s poems in Asheville Poetry Review, International Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal. Her interest in the work of Yvan Goll has led to publication of several essays; her translation of Goll’s late work, Traumkraut, is published by Black Lawrence Press as Dreamweed.