Zoé Valdés was born in Cuba in 1959 and worked with UNESCO and the Cuban Cultural Office in Paris between 1983 and 1988. In exile in France since 1995, she has been a screenwriter and assistant director of the magazine Ciné Cubano. Her bestselling debut novel, Yocandra in the Paradise of Nada, brought her international acclaim—she was once dubbed "the Madonna of Cuban literature"—and she has written many more novels, including I Gave You All I Had and The Weeping Woman, both published by Arcade. Winner of the Planeta Prize, Azorín Prize, and Premio de Novela Ciudad de Torrevieja, she received the Tres Llaves (Three Keys) to the city of Miami in 2001. She lives in Paris.

David Frye teaches anthropology and Latin American culture and society at the University of Michigan. As a professional translator he has published more than thirty books in translation, ranging from Heart of Tango (2010) by the Spanish novelist Elia Barceló and the sixteenth-century picaresque novel Lazarillo de Tormes (2015) to the poetry of Nancy Morejón. He resides in Ann Arbor.