Hassan Kanafani (he/him) is from Gaza. He is a graduate from the Faculty of Engineering at Al-Azhar University in Gaza.

Yasuko Thanh (she/her) is a writer and a creative writing instructor at the University of Victoria in Victoria, BC. Her first novel, Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains (Penguin Canada), a tale of rebellion in French Indochina, won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize in 2016. Her bestselling memoir, Mistakes to Run With (Penguin Canada), which reflected on her journey from sex worker to successful writer, was a finalist for the Jim Deva Prize for Writing that Provokes. Her most recent novel, To the Bridge (Hamish Hamilton), explored gaps in mental health care preventing suicide. Her next novel, The Falling Maria, is forthcoming in 2027.