Kārlis Vērdiņš - born in 1979, works as the senior researcher at the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia and an assistant professor at the Art Academy of Latvia. He got a PhD in Latvian Literature from the University of Latvia in 2009, and another PhD in Comparative Literature from the Washington University in St. Louis, USA, in 2022.

He is the author of 5 poetry collections: „The Icebreakers” (2001), „Cottage Cheese with Sour Cream” (2004), „I” (2008), „Adults” (2015), „Ready-Made Poetry” (2020), and „Livonian Ballads” (2023) as well as children verse books „Alphabet Soup” (2007), „Dad” (2016), „Aunt Dill” (2018) and „Jamboree” (2023). 

Translations of his poems have been collected in separate books in Russian, Polish, Czech, English, Spanish, Slovenian, Lithuanian, French and Finnish.

He has received following awards: the newspaper Diena Culture Award (2001, 2008, 2015), Poetry Day’s Prize 2008 for the best poetry collection of the year, Jānis Baltvilks Prize in children literature (2016), for the best poetry collection (2016), for the best translation for selected poems of Emily Dickinson (2018), Latvian Annual Literary Award  for the best book for children (2024).

Vērdiņš has translated the works of T.S. Eliot, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, W.B. Yeats, Georg Trakl, Mikhail Kuzmin, Joseph Brodsky, Konstantin Biebl, Lev Rubinstein and other European and American poets, including Russian poets of Latvia.