Robert Cohen is a novelist, short story writer, and essayist, and is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Middlebury College, USA. His books include Inspired Sleep, Amateur Barbarians, and The Varieties of Romantic Experience, and his stories and essays have appeared in Harper's, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, GQ, and The Believer. Among his awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, a Lila Wallace Writers Award, and a Pushcart Prize.

Jay Parini is a poet, novelist, and biographer, and Axinn Professor of English and Creative Writing at Middlebury College, USA. He is the author of The Last Station, which was adapted into an Academy Award-nominated film, and The Passages of H.M. His novels and biographies have been translated into over thirty languages. He is the editor of the Norton Anthology of American Autobiography, The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry, and the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. He is a regular contributor to The Chronicle of Higher Education, CNN, The New York Times, and The Guardian. He has also written for GQ, The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, and Salon.