Yuri Andrukhovych is a Ukrainian novelist, poet, and essayist. In the mid 1980s, he cofounded the poetical group Bu-Ba-Bu (Burlesque-Blaster-Buffoonery), which rebelled against socialist realism and instead promoted a new poetic ethos of aesthetic freedom and the ludic. Widely regarded as one of the most important figures in contemporary Ukrainian literature, he is the recipient of the 2014 Hannah Arendt Prize and the 2016 Goethe Medal. He lives in Ukraine.

Mark Andryczyk teaches Ukrainian literature at Columbia University, where he administers the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute. He has translated the works of Volodymyr Rafeyenko and Yuri Andrukhovych, and he is the editor, compiler, and a translator of the anthologies Writing from Ukraine: Fiction, Poetry and Essays since 1965 and Ukraine 22: Ukrainian Writers Respond to War.