Oliver Rohe was born in 1972 to a German father and an Armenian mother from Lebanon. He is a novelist and critic, and a founding member of the literary review Inculte. His novel Vacant Lot was published in an English translation by Laird Hunt in 2010.
Lauren Messina is a native English speaker who reads, writes, and speaks in both English and French. In 2008 she received a Bachelor's Degree in International Studies with a minor in French from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. In 2010, she received a Graduate Certificate in Translation, and she completed the Online Certificate in Applied Literary Translation from the same institution in 2011.