Buthaina Al Nasiri, born in Iraq in 1947, graduated from the College of Arts of the University of Baghdad and has lived in Cairo since 1979, where she runs a publishing house that specializes in the works of Iraqi writers under UN sanctions. Five collections of her own short stories have been published in Arabic. Denys Johnson-Davies is the pioneer translator of modern Arabic literature, with more than 25 volumes of translation to his name. He lives in Cairo.