John Taylor was born in Des Moines in 1952. He has lived in France since 1977. He is the author of several volumes of short prose and poetry, most recently "The Dark Brightness" (Xenos Books, 2017), "Grassy Stairways" (The MadHat Press, 2017), "Remembrance of Water & Twenty-Five Trees" (The Bitter Oleander Press, 2018), and a "double book" coauthored with the Swiss poet Pierre Chappuis, "A Notebook of Clouds & A Notebook of Ridges" (The Fortnightly Review Press, 2019). His first two books, "The Presence of Things Past" (Story Line Press, 1992) and "Mysteries of the Body and the Mind" (Story Line Press, 1998), were republished in new editions by Red Hen Press in 2020. As a polyglot literary critic, Taylor has long been a bridge between European literature and English-speaking countries. His essays have been gathered by Transaction Publishers in his three-volume "Paths to Contemporary French Literature" (2004, 2007, 2011), "Into the Heart of European Poetry" (2008), and "A Little Tour through European Poetry" (2015). Among his many translations of French, Italian, and Modern Greek literature are books by Philippe Jaccottet, Jacques Dupin, José-Flore Tappy, Pierre Voélin, Pierre Chappuis, Pierre-Albert Jourdan, Catherine Colomb, Pascal Quignard, Lorenzo Calogero, Alfredo de Palchi, Franca Mancinelli, and Elias Petropoulos. His translation of Elias Papadimitrakopoulos's stories, "Toothpaste with Chlorophyll & Maritime Hots Baths," originally published by Asylum Arts in 1992, was republished in 2020 by Coyote Arts.