Shahrnush Parsipur was a writer and translator born in Iran in 1946. She was jailed for her 1989 novel Women Without Men, which became an underground bestseller in Iran while still banned there. It has been translated into many languages and was longlisted for the 2026 International Booker Prize. She was also the author of Touba and the Meaning of Night, among many other books, and lived in exile in Northern California until her death in 2026.

Sara Khalili is an editor and award-winning translator of contemporary Iranian literature. She is the recipient of a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Award for Shahriar Mandanipour's short story collection Seasons of Purgatory, which has also been longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature. She lives in New York.