Liesl Schillinger is a widely published literary critic, writer, and translator who writes regularly for The New York Times Book Review and spent many years on the editorial staff of The New Yorker. A Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters of France, she he lives in New York.

Julie Kavanagh is an award-winning biographer and the author of The Girl Who Loved Camellias, about the courtesan Marie Duplessis, who inspired The Lady of the Camellias. She has been London editor of both Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. She lives in London.