Meena Alexander's books of poetry include Illiterate Heart which won the PEN Open Book Award, Raw Silk and the recently published Quickly Changing River. She is the author of the memoir Fault Lines. Her reflections on poetry, migration and memory Poetics of Dislocation is forthcoming in 2009 from the University of Michigan Poets on Poetry Series. Currently she is working on a cycle of poems based on drawings made by children from Darfur, in the aftermath of violence. She is Distinguished Professor of English at Hunter College and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York and a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow in Poetry.

Nandita Haksar was a journalist before her involvement in the women's rights movement forced her to take to law. For the past twenty-five years she has worked as a human rights lawyer, campaigner and writer. She has set many precedents in human rights and refugees law. She has taken up cases in the courts in India as well as appearing before international courts and committees. She has evolved and taught courses on human rights in various universities.

Haksar's publications include: Demystification of Law for Women (1986); the book has been translated into regional languages and extensively used by women's groups for spreading legal literacy; Nagaland File: A Question of Human Rights. The book first exposed the human rights violations being committed by the Indian security forces in the North East of India; Framing Geelani, Hanging Afzal: Patriotism in the Time of Terror (2007) in which she writes about her experience of defending two Kashmiri Muslims accused of attacking the Indian Parliament, and Rogue Agent: How India's Military Intelligence Betrayed the Burmese Resistance (forthcoming, Penguin 2009).