Jean Boucault and Johnny Rasse first learned to imitate bird calls as children in northern France. Their rivalry at bird calling competitions gave way to friendship, and now to a partnership as performers. Although Boucault and Rasse are trained as a pharmacist and engineer respectively, their passion for birds led them to create a stage show under the name Les chanteurs d'oiseaux (the Bird Singers), recording an album and touring in France and internationally.

Katia Grubisic is a writer, editor, and translator whose work has appeared in various Canadian and international publications. Her collection What if red ran out was shortlisted for the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry and won the Gerald Lampert award for best first book. Her book translations include Martine Delvaux's White Out, Stéphane Martelly's Little Girl Gazelle, and Marie-Claire Blais's final novels. Her translations of David Clerson's first novel, Brothers, and of A Cemetery for Bees, by Alina Dumitrescu, were shortlisted for Governor General's Awards, and her translation of Clerson's short story collection, To See Out the Night, won the Cole Foundation Prize for Translation.