Andrew Fitzsimons was born in Ireland, and lives in Tokyo. His poems have appeared in journals and anthologies in Ireland, Britain, Italy, Japan, the United States, and Canada, including the Global Poetry Anthology 2013. He was runner-up for the Patrick Kavanagh Award in 2006 and was shortlisted for the Montreal Prize in 2013. He has translated from Italian poets, including Dante, Montale and Ungaretti, and has published three volumes of poetry, What the Sky Arranges (2013), A Fire in the Head (2014), and The Sunken Keep (2017), all from Isobar Press. His translation Basho: The Complete Haiku of Matsuo Basho was published by the University of California Press in 2022, and received the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Work of Literary Translation (Honorable Mention) from the MLA in 2023. A special Collector's Edition of the book appeared in 2024.