Heinz Insu Fenkl left Korea when he was twelve. His family eventually settled in Castroville, California. An award-winning writer and translator, and a former Fulbright Scholar in Korea, he now teaches Creative Writing, Asian American Literature, and Korean Literature at Vassar College. He lives in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Susan Choi was born in Indiana and raised in Texas, the daughter of a Korean father and a Russian-Jewish mother. She holds an undergraduate degree from Yale and an M.F.A. from Cornell. Her first novel, The Foreign Student, won the Asian American Literary Award. Her second novel, American Woman, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A Person of Interest is her third book.