H.M. Bouwman is the author of The Remarkable & Very True Story of Lucy & Snowcap (Marshall Cavendish, 2008).

An associate professor of English at the University of St. Thomas, she lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with her two sons. A Crack in the Sea is her second novel.

Yuko Shimizu is a Japanese illustrator based in New York City and instructor at School of Visual Arts. Newsweek Japan has chosen Yuko as one of "100 Japanese People The World Respects" in 2009.

Her first self-titled monograph came out in 2011 (Gestalten), and her second was released from ROADS Publishing in spring of 2016. Other books include: A Wild Swan (collaboration with novelist Michael Cunningham, FSG, 2015) and a multi award winning children's book Barbed Wire Baseball (written by Marissa Moss, Abrams, 2013).

You may have seen her work on The Gap T-shirts, Pepsi cans, VISA billboards, Microsoft and Target ads, as well as on the book covers of Penguin, Scholastic, DC Comics, and on the pages of NY Times, Time, Rolling Stone, New Yorker and in many other publications over last ten years.