Alejo Carpentier was born in Cuba and, after living in Europe, returned to Havana after the revolution. The author of three other novels, including The Lost Steps, he died in 1980.

Pablo Medina is a Cuban-born writer and translator. He has written sixteen books of poetry, fiction, and memoir, including Cubop City Blues, The Cigar Roller, and Exiled Memories: A Cuban Childhood. He has translated the work of Virgilio Piñera and Federico García Lorca and has been awarded grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Cintas Foundation, and others. He is a professor of fiction, poetry, and translation at Emerson College in Boston.