Emöke Z. B’Racz was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1948, daughter to a Hungarian political activist father who received the Hungarian Republic Medal of Honor in 1991. Having come to the United States in 1964, B’Racz is a poet, translator, and owner of Malaprop’s Bookstore, a seminal landmark in the development of the regional poetry scene. She was also named Bookseller of the Year by the Independent Booksellers Association. Her first translations of the work of Gyula Illyes appeared in New York Quarterly in 1973. Stories of The Seven-Headed Sewing Machine, published by New Native Press (1993), come from a volume of collected poems by exile Katalin Ladik. Her latest collection is entitled Every Tree is the Forest (Burning Bush Press, 2002).
