(Amsterdam, NL, 1963) studied Dutch language and literature in Amsterdam. He writes reviews, interviews, columns and obituaries, and heads the books section of De Volkskrant newspaper. In 2011 he published Eindelijk Sneeuw (Snow at Last: twelve wintry stories about artists, writers, and books, from Willem Witsen's cityscapes to the tears of Mrs. Dickens). Exerpts from his reviews and interviews were published in the books Langzaam lopen is al verdacht (Walking Slowly is Suspicious, 1999), De ongeneeslijke lezer – een werkboek (The Incurable Reader: a workbook, 2002), Het woord is aan de schrijver (The Writer Has the Floor, 2005), and De Broodschrijver (The Hack, 2006), about Bart Chabot's biography of Herman Brood. In 2012 he published Kreten uit een urn (Cries from an Urn), a lecture on the role of the critic in our time. His text "Naar boven mit Brakman" ("Up With Brakman") accompanied the 2015 unveiling of the Brakman monument in Enschede.

(Zimbabwe, 1971) debuted in 2009 with the short-story collection An Elegy for Easterly, followed by her first novel The Book of Memory (2015) and another story collection, Rotten Row (2016). Her new book Out of Darkness, Shining Light tells the story of the perilous, months-long trek made in 1873 by 69 workers to transport the body of the explorer David Livinstone from central Africa to the Zanzibar coast, so it could eventually be buried in England. "I write the history of the black people of Zimbabwe, those about whom nobody ever speaks." Gappah studied law in Zimbabwe and Cambridge, worked as a lawyer, and lives in Berlin as artist-in-residence. She has won many international prizes for her work.