Mathias Énard (born in 1972) is a member of the Isocèle research group in Paris and on the editorial board of Inculte, a literary and philosophical review. A resident at the Villa Médicis in 2005-2006, he currently teaches Arabic at the University of Barcelona. He has published several translations: Mirzâ Habib Esfahâni's Epitre de la queue, translated from Persian, and Yussef Bazzi's Yasser Arafat m'a regardé et m'a souri, translated from the Arabic. He is the author of several books of poetry, including Travail de nuit (with lithographist and printer Thomas Marin) and Bréviaire des artificiers (with drawings by Pierre Marquès), and of three novels published by Actes Sud: La perfection du tir, Remonter l'Orénoque, and Zone, for which he was awarded the 2008 December Prize and the 2009 Livre Inter Prize. Zone is scheduled for publication in the United States with Three Percent press.

Raja Shehadeh is a Palestinian lawyer and writer who lives in Ramallah on the West Bank. He is author of the highly acclaimed Strangers in the House and When the Birds Stopped Singing. His latest book, Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape, won the UK's most prestigious award for political writing, The Orwell Prize, in 2008. Shehadeh is also the founder of the human rights organisation Al-Haq, an affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists. His next book, A Rift in Time, Travels of My Ottoman Uncle, will be published in August by Profile Books.

Natalie Levisalles is a journalist with Libération. She is also the author of an essay on teenagers entitled L'ado et le bonobo. Essai sur un âge impossible.