Bernard Malamud was born in 1914 in New York City and later received his B. A. from City College of New York and his M. A. from Columbia University. All of Malamud's works are highly respected, including "Armistice" (his first), "The Magic Barrel," which won the National Book Award, "The Fixer," which received a Pulitzer Prize. "The Assistant," "The Natural," "The Fixer," and "The Angel Levine," which were all adapted as films. Bernard Malamud died in 1986.
Jonathan Safran Foer (born 1977) is an American author best known for his novels Everything Is Illuminated (2002) and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005). He was born in Washington, D.C. and attended Georgetown Day School and Princeton University. In 2000, Foer was awarded the Zoetrope: All-Story Fiction Prize and in 2007 he was included in Granta's Best of Young American Novelists. His forthcoming nonfiction book is entitled, Eating Animals. In June 2004, he married the novelist Nicole Krauss. They live in Park Slope in Brooklyn, New York, and have two children.