(Lebanon, 1945) is one of the most acclaimed writers in the contemporary Arab World. She is the author of seven novels, including The Story of Zahra, Women of Sand & Myrrh, Beirut Blues, Only in London, a collection of stories: I Sweep the Sun off Rooftops, and her much praised memoir of her mother’s life The Locust and the Bird. She has written two plays, Dark Afternoon Tea and Paper Husband. Most recently she published One Thousand and One Nights, an adaptation and re-imagining of some of the stories from the legendary Alf Layla Wa Layla - the Arabian Nights, commissioned by the director Tim Supple for the theatre, and performed in Toronto and Edinburgh in 2011. Her work has been translated into twenty-eight languages. Hanan al-Shaykh lives in London.

Tayeb Salih was born in 1929 in rural Karmakol, in northern Sudan. He studied at the University of Khartoum. Like the narrator of Season of Migration to the North, Salih worked as a teacher in Sudan, before working for the BBC Arabic Service. He then worked in a variety of diplomatic positions, including as the director general of the Ministry of Information in Doha, Qatar, and as representative to the Gulf States for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). After years of success as a diplomat and education advocate, Salih published Season of Migration to the North in 1969. The novel won immediate accolades from critics worldwide, and it remains his most famous book, alongside the novella The Wedding of Zein. Despite this critical acclaim, most of Salih's work remains untranslated. His collected works, which include political essays, travel writing, and book reviews, are popular and widely available in Arabic. Even so, Salih remained a controversial figure into his old age, publishing an essay in 1990 that was sharply critical of the Islamist regime in charge of Sudan at the time. He died in 2009.

(Marken, 1958-2009) was a poet, a writer and a commentator, with a regular column on the Forum page and the book pages of the Volkskrant. Zeeman was the editor of the arts section of the Volkskrant and from 2006-2007 its Rome correspondent. In 2006 he and the writer Abdelkader Benali published an exchange of letters, exchanging ideas on politics, life, love and literature. In 2002 Zeeman received the Gouden Ganzenveer (Golden Goose Quill) for his merits for Dutch literature. Zeeman became well-known in the 1990s as the host of his monthly book programme 'Late at night after a short walk', later to be renamed 'Zeeman with books'. In 1991 he published his first volume of poetry, Beeldenstorm (Iconoclasm), winning him the C. Buddingh Prize. His second volume Verhoudingen (Relationships) appeared in 1995. In the same year he published short stories entitled De Verduistering (The Darkening). He died in 2009.

(Morocco, 1958) in 2013 won  the Prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle for his collection of short stories The Curious Case of Dassoukine's Trousers. Since his debut in 1996 humor has been his weapon against intolerance, both in his novels and in his other work. In his fiction, such as the collection of short stories Poldermarokkanen (2010), the novels Une année chez les Français (2011) and La femme la plus riche de Yorkshire (2011), Laroui describes time and again the collision between North African culture and Western culture. Laroui grew up in Casablanca and studied econometry, mathematics, physics and architecture in Paris. He lectures French literature and Arab culture at the University of Amsterdam.