Audrey Thomas was born in Binghamton, New York, and emigrated to Canada in 1959. She is the author of a number of highly praised novels, including, Intertidal Life, an obsessive introspection of a failed marriage, which was published in 1984 and nominated for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. Thomas has received three honours from the Writers’ Trust of Canada: the Marian Engel Award, the W.O. Mitchell Literary Prize, and the Matt Cohen Award: In Celebration of a Writing Life.

Jennifer Johnston is one of the foremost Irish writers of her, or any, generation. She has won the Whitbread Prize (THE OLD JEST), the Evening Standard Best First Novel Award (for The Captains and The Kings), the Yorkshire Post Award, Best Book of the Year (twice, for The Captains and The Kings and How Many Miles to Babylon? ). She was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize with Shadows on our Skin.

An author, scholar, and diplomat, Jorge Volpi was born in Mexico in 1968 and has a B.A. in law and a Masters in Mexican literature. He is the author of nine novels and collections and is the former cultural attaché and director of the Mexican Culture Institute in Paris. He currently the director of the Festival Internacional Cervatino.

Michael Holroyd (born August 27, 1935, London, England) is a British writer and editor best known for his meticulous, scholarly biographies of Lytton Strachey, Augustus John, and George Bernard Shaw.

Steinunn Sigurðardóttir is an Icelandic poet and novelist. She finished her university studies in 1972 with a BA in psychology and philosophy at University College Dublin. Since then, she has worked as a journalist for radio and television. She has lived in different places in Europe, the United States and Japan.