Wajdi Mouawad is a Lebanese-born actor, director, and playwright whose work has been met with great acclaim. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honours for his writing and directing, including the Governor General's Literary Award for Drama, the 2004 Prix de la Francophonie, and the Grand Prix du théâtre awarded by the Académie française in 2009. Other notable plays include Forêts (Forests), Incendies (Scorched), Littoral (Tideline), and Rêves (Dreams). Wajdi lives in Montreal.

Linda Gaboriau is a Montreal-based dramaturge and literary translator. She has worked as a freelance journalist for the CBC and the Montreal Gazette, and has worked extensively in Canadian and Québécois theatre. Linda has won awards for her translations of more than eighty plays and novels by Quebec writers, including many of the Quebec plays best known to English-Canadian audiences. She is the founding director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre.