Ian Jack is a writer and editor. From 1995 to 2007 he edited the literary magazine Granta, and previously The Independent on Sunday, of which he was a co-founder. He began his career as a journalist on newspapers in Scotland and for sixteen years worked at The Sunday Times as a reporter, editor and, mainly in India and Pakistan, a foreign correspondent. He has reviewed books for many publications, including The New York Times and the London Review of Books. Last year he published a second anthology of essays, The Country Formerly Known as Great Britain: Writings 1989-2009. He lives in London with his wife and two children, and writes a weekly column for the Guardian.

Janine di Giovanni is an award-winning author and journalist. She has been covering global conflict since the 1980s, and is considered one of Europe's most respected journalists. She is the author of The Place at the End of the World: Essays from the Edge, and Madness Visible: A Memoir of War, both of which have been critically acclaimed for dealing so movingly with the human cost of war. Janine writes regularly for The Times and Vanity Fair, and is a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, The Spectator, National Geographic, Granta and many others. She is the recipient of four major awards, including the National Magazine Award for her work in Kosovo, two Amnesty International Awards for her coverage of Sierra Leone and Bosnia, and Britain's Granada Television's Foreign Correspondent of the Year for her reporting on Chechnya. Janine's next book, Ghosts by Daylight, is a memoir of war and motherhood set in Paris and is due out in 2011. Janine will act as president of the jury for this year's Prix Bayeux Correspondents des Guerres in October. She lives in Paris with her son. www.janinedigiovanni.com