Elizabeth Hardwick (1916-2007) was one of the greatest intellectuals of her time. A co-founder of The New York Review of Books, she authored three novels, a biography of Herman Melville, and four collections of essays, as well as contributing more than a hundred pieces to American publications. She was married to the poet Robert Lowell from 1949 to 1972.

Saskia Hamilton is the editor of The Letters of Robert Lowell and the co-editor (with Thomas Travisano) of Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, and is the author of As for Dream, Divide These, and, in the UK, Canal: New and Selected Poems. She is Associate Professor of English at Barnard College, Columbia University, and lives in New York City.