Born in Buenos Aires in 1942, Ariel Dorfman is a Chilean citizen. A supporter of Salvador Allende, he was forced into exile and has lived in the United States for many years. Since writing his legendary essay, "How to Read Donald Duck", Dorfman has built up an impressive body of work that has translated into more than thirty languages. Besides poetry, essays and novels--"Hard Rain" (Readers International, 1990), winner of the Sudamericana Award; "Widows" (Pluto Press, 1983); "The Last Song of Manuel Sendero" (Viking, 1987); "Mascara" (Viking, 1988); "Konfidenz" (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1995)--he has written plays, including "Death and the Maiden", and produced in ninety countries. He has… won various international awards, including two Kennedy Center Theatre Awards. With his son, Rodrigo, he received an award for best television drama in Britain for "Prisoners of Time" in 1996. A professor at Duke University, Dorfman lives in Durham, North Carolina.Barbara Brenner was born on June 26, 1925, in Brooklyn, New York. Brenner attended Seton Hall College and Rutgers University from 1942-46, while also working as a copy editor at Prudential Insurance Company. Her freelance work as an artist's agent prepared her for a literary life. In 1957 she published her first book, Somebody's Slippers, Somebody's Shoes. She followed this book with an educational picture book entitled Barto Takes the Subway, designed to improve reading comprehension and sight vocabulary. Her artistic development continued when she began to collaborate with her husband, illustrator Fred Brenner, on The Flying Patchwork Quilt. Her next book, On the Frontier with Mr. Audubon, was selected by School Library Journal as The Best of the Best among children's books published over 26 seasons. One of her bestselling titles was Wagon Wheels (published in 1978), which deals with the trials and tribulations of a close-knit African American family. In 1986, Brenner was honored with the Pennsylvania School Librarians' Association's Outstanding Pennsylvania Author Award. Brenner's most celebrated book is a collection entitled Voices: Poetry and Art from around the World, for which she was chief editor. This book received an ALA Notable Book for Children mention and an ALA Best Book for Young Adults award.
Julia Takaya is a teacher and a writer. For most of the year, she and her husband live in Tokyo.