Marina Balina is Isaac Funk Professor Emerita and Professor of Russian Studies at Illinois Wesleyan University. Her scholarship focuses on historical and theoretical aspects of twentieth-century Russian children's literature. She is the author of numerous articles in English, German, and Russian. She served as editor and co-editor of 12 volumes, most recently Hans Christian Andersen and Russia (2020) and The Pedagogy of Images: Depicting Communism for Children (2021).

Larissa Rudova is Yale B. and Lucille D. Griffith Professor in Modern Languages and Professor of German and Russian at Pomona College. She is the author of two monographs, Pasternak's Short Fiction and the Cultural Vanguard (1994) and Understanding Boris Pasternak (1997). She has co-edited a volume of scholarly articles, Russian Children's Literature and Culture (2008), as well as three thematic journal clusters on children's and young adult literature and culture.

Anastasia Kostetskaya is an Associate Professor of Russian at the University of Hawaii at M¿noa. She holds a PhD in Theory of Language from Volgograd State Pedagogical University and another PhD in Russian Literature and Culture from Ohio State University. She is the author of¿ Russian Symbolism in Search of Transcendental Liquescence: Iconizing Emotion by Blending Time, Media, and the Senses (2019).