DANILO KIS (Serbian Cyrillic: Данило Киш) (1935-1989) was a Yugoslavian novelist, short story writer and poet who wrote in Serbo-Croatian. Kis was influenced by Bruno Schulz, Vladimir Nabokov, Jorge Luis Borges and Ivo Andric, among other authors. His most famous works include A Tomb for Boris Davidovich and The Encyclopedia of the Dead.

MICHAEL HENRY HEIM (1943-2012) was a Professor of Slavic Languages, at the University California at Los Angeles (UCLA). He received his doctorate at Harvard in 1971. He is an active and prolific translator, and is fluent in Czech, French, German, Italian, Russian, and Serbo-Croatian.