'When "the factory of poetry" shuts down, the natural spring of poetry becomes audible - Avinash Shrestha's voice is that spring. Building upon conventions of the lyric and of universal symbols and fables and then either toppling them or surpassing them to claim his own distinct poetic space, Shrestha's vision taps into the consciousness of the world, assimilating and transcending cultures. Rohan Chhetri's translations flow smoothly and succeed in catching the syntactic patterns of Nepali, helping us become friends with one of Nepal's most moving and significant poetic voices.' - Mani Rao

'The poems [in The Dust Draws Its Face on the Wind] sing with chimerical music and demonstrate Shrestha's singular use of language that blends Hindu liturgical elements and Vedic cosmology, Sanskrit-rooted high diction and Nepali vernacular, together with a tender branch of surrealism within postmodern aesthetics. Poet and emerging translator Rohan Chhetri's work as translator begins with the well-considered decision to translate these exquisite, "wild by design" poems by Shrestha, and ends with a body of brilliant, culturally complex poems that have roots across the South Asian diaspora.' -PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants, Judges Citation (Kareem James Abu-Zeid, Peter Constantine, Karen Emmerich, Nicholas Glastonbury, Elisabeth Jaquette, Tess Lewis, Aditi Machado, Sawako Nakayasu, Wanda Phipps, Jeremy Tiang, Lara Vergnaud, and Jeffrey Zuckerman)