Lithuanian poet and philologist Tomas Venclova was born in 1937 in Klaipėda. He graduated from Vilnius University in 1960 and was one of the founders of the Lithuanian Helsinki Group in 1976. In 1977, Venclova emigrated to the United States, where he currently teaches at Yale University.

Tomas Venclova's poetry has been translated into English, Hungarian, German, Polish, Russian, Slovenian, Czech, and other languages. His works published in Russian include "Unstable Equilibrium: Eight Russian Poetic Texts" (1986), "Conversations at the Feast: Essays on Russian Literature" (1997), "Freedom and Truth" (1999), "Faceted Air" (2002), and "Essays on Brodsky" (2005).