Djamila Morani is an Arabic-speaking Algerian novelist and a professor of Arabic language and literature. She writes fast-paced historical set in the Abbasid period--the golden age of Baghdad. Djamila lives in Relizane, in the west of Algeria.

Sawad Hussain is a Cambridge-based Arabic-to-English translator whose work has been recognised by English PEN, the Anglo-Omani Society and the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, among others. She is a judge for the Palestine Book Awards and the 2023 National Translation Award. She has run translation workshops under the auspices of Shadow Heroes, Africa Writes, Shubbak Festival, the Yiddish Book Center, the British Library and the National Centre for Writing. Sawad has been selected to be the Princeton Translator in Residence in 2025.