Nicholas Evans was born in Worcestershire, England on July 26, 1950. He received a law degree from Oxford University. After graduating, he worked as a journalist for three years on the Evening Chronicle, and then moved into television, producing films about US politics and the Middle-East for a weekly current affairs program called Weekend World. In 1982, he started to produce arts documentaries about famous writers, painters and film-makers. At age 50 he began writing. His first novel, The Horse Whisperer, was published in 1995 and adapted into a movie starring, produced and directed by Robert Redford. His other novels include The Loop, The Smoke Jumper, The Divide and The Brave.
Stephen C. Levinson is Director of the Language and Cognition Group at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands.