Ronelle Alexander is professor of Slavic languages and literatures at the University of California, Berkeley. She has traveled throughout Bulgaria for her research on dialects and traditional culture and has been interviewed on Bulgarian radio. She has also taught at the University of California, Los Angeles; Yale University; and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Olga M. Mladenova, a native speaker of Bulgarian, is assistant professor of Russian at the University of Calgary in Canada.