Yoko Tawada was born in Tokyo in 1960 and moved to Germany in 1982. She writes in Japanese and German, and her work has been awarded the most prestigious literary prizes in both countries, including the Akutagawa Prize, the Kleist Prize, the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize, the Tanizaki Prize, and the Goethe Medal. She is the author of stories, poems, plays, essays, and novels, including Memoirs of a Polar Bear, published by Portobello Books in 2017.

Teju Cole is a novelist, photographer and critic. He was born in the United States in 1975, and lived in Nigeria until he went to university.

His first novel, Open City, featured on numerous book of the year lists and was the winner of prizes such as the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Internationaler Literaturpreis and was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize of the Royal Society of Literature. Cole is the Gore Vidal Professor of the Practice of Creative Writing at Harvard.