Vesna Maric was born in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 1976 and left at sixteen as part of a convoy of refugees. She went on to work for the BBC World Service and now writes Lonely Planet travel guides, translates literary fiction and non-fiction from Croatian into English, and writes a variety of journalism for publications including The Guardian. Maric's memoir, Bluebird, was published by Granta in 2009, and was longlisted for The Orwell Prize; her first novel, The President Shop, was published by Sandorf Passage in 2021.

Robert Perisic was born in Split, Croatia, in 1969. His most widely translated works are the novels Nas covjek na terenu, (Our Man in Iraq) and Podrucje bez signala (No-Signal Area), both of which have received international critical acclaim in numerous prestige media outlets, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, NPR's All Things Considered, and The Guardian.