Inara Cedrins received her B.A. in Writing from Columbia College in Chicago and her M.A. in Arts Administration from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Of Latvian descent, she translates poetry and prose from the Latvian into English. Her anthology of contemporary Latvian poetry written while Latvia was under Soviet occupation was published by the University of Iowa Press, and she is currently working on a new Baltic anthology. She lived in the Mexican barrio of Pilsen for seven years: her Chicago Facades series of linoleum block prints had its inception there, and expanded to include other ethnic neighborhoods and city landmarks, appearing in Chicago Magazine and Crain's Chicago Business. She relocated to New York in 1996 and participated in poetry workshops there as well as working on a series of oil on canvas paintings depicting Manhattan's embellished edifices. She is now working on the Dolce Vita series, centered in Italy but including other European cities. Inara went to the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing in 1998 to study traditional Chinese ink painting on silk, remaining five years to teach at universities including Tsinghua University and Peking University, as well as to the People's Liberation Army and students at the Central Academy of Fine Art, designing the courses and using poetry as a vehicle. Two collections of her poetry were published bilingually by the Foreign Literature Press in Beijing. During the 1999 Chinese New Year break she traveled to India, and returned in 2000, to study the Indian method of painting on silk, and to complete the collection of poetry titled Honey Water in the Harsh Palace which was to be the third book of the trilogy published by the Foreign Literature press. She had a solo exhibit of Chinese ink on silk paintings at the Qin Gallery in Beijing in 2001. In 2002-03 she lectured on art and taught in Guangzhou (Canton). In 2003 she went to Nepal to study the technique of thangka painting; wrote a book on Symbols and Gods of Tibetan Buddhism and Hinduism in Nepal for Pilgrims Press and coordinated the illustrations by a Tibetan thangka painter and a Newari artist. After the king's coup d'etat, she relocated to Riga, where she started a literary agency called The Baltic Edge and taught Creative Writing at the University of Latvia.