Roland Barthes (1915–1980) was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His works include Mythologies, S/Z, A Lover's Discourse, and Camera Lucida. Barthes's final seminars, The Neutral: Lecture Course at the Collège de France (1977–1978) (2005); The Preparation of the Novel: Lecture Courses and Seminars at the Collège de France (1978–1979 and 1979–1980) (2010); and How to Live Together: Novelistic Simulations of Some Everyday Spaces (2012), are also published by Columbia University Press.
Jody Gladding is a poet and author most recently of Translations from Bark Beetle. She has translated thirty works from French, for which she has received grants from the Centre National du Livre and the French-American Foundation Translation Prize.