Geneviève Damas is a Belgian actress, playwright, and novelist. After completing a law degree, she turned to theater. She has acted, directed, and written award-winning plays for both children and adults. If You Cross the River is her first novel and has received wide international acclaim. It won the Prix Victor Rossel in Belgium and the Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie, awarded annually for fiction that enriches cultural diversity and the French language on the five continents. Damas lives in Brussels. Jody Gladding is the author of four collections of poems: the spiders my arms, Translations from Bark Beetle, Rooms and Their Airs, and Stone Crop. She has translated thirty books from French, including Jean Giono's The Serpent of Stars and Pierre Michon's Small Lives, which won the French-American Translation Prize. She lives in Vermont.