Marilynne Robinson is the recipient of a 2012 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama, for "her grace and intelligence in writing." In 2013, she was awarded South Korea's Park Kyong-ni Prize for her contribution to international literature. She is the author of National Book Critics Circle Award winning book Lila; Gilead, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Home, winner of the Orange Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She lives in Iowa City, where she taught at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop for 25 years.

Donna Bailey Nurse is a Canadian literary critic, curator and writer. She is the author of What’s a Black Critic To Do? and the editor of Revival: An Anthology of Black Canadian Writing. Donna is a contributor to the Walrus, The Globe and Mail and the Literary Review of Canada and a columnist for CBC Radio’s The Next Chapter. She was a jury member for the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize and is currently at work on a Black history book for Harper Collins Canada, part of a two-book deal that includes a memoir of her Jamaican family.