Frances Watts was born in Switzerland and grew up in Australia. Her bestselling picture books include Goodnight Mice! (illustrated by Judy Watson), the winner of the 2012 Prime Minister's Award for Children's Fiction; 2006 CBC Honour Book Kisses for Daddy (ill. David Legge); and 2008 Children's Book Council of Australia award-winner Parsley Rabbit's Book about Books (ill. David Legge). The Raven's Wing, set in Ancient Rome, and The Peony Lantern, set in nineteenth-century Japan, are her first middle grade/YA novels.

Born in 1976 in Ruichang, in the province of Jiangxi, A Yi worked as a policeman, sports journalist and editor before deciding to dedicate himself to writing at the age of thirty-two. After a brief period on the editorial board of Chinese literary magazine Chutzpah/Tian Nan, he began working in a publishing house. His first work, a collection of short stories, was released in 2008. In 2010 he published his second story collection, The Bird Saw Me, to popular and critical acclaim. In 2012, his novel A Perfect Crime was published in China (English edition Oneworld, 2015). Wake Me Up at Nine in the Morning is his latest work, first published in China in 2017.