Antonio Muñoz Molina is the author of more than a dozen novels, including Sepharad, A Manuscript of Ashes, and In Her Absence. He has been awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society and the Prince of Asturias Award, among many others. Muñoz Molina lives in Madrid and New York City.

Curtis Bauer is a poet and translator of prose and poetry from Spanish. He is the recipient of a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant and a Banff International Literary Translation Centre fellowship. His translation of Jeannette Clariond's Image of Absence won the International Latino Book Award for Best Nonfiction Book Translation from Spanish to English. Bauer teaches creative writing and comparative literature at Texas Tech University.