The writer and journalist José Revueltas (1914-1976) was a lifelong political dissident. In 1968, Revueltas spent two and a half years as a prisoner in the infamous Palacio de Lecumberri, a penitentiary near Mexico City. There, in the space of weeks, Revueltas wrote The Hole, using the real prison as the setting for his novella. Revueltas was awarded both prestigious the Premio Nacional de Literatura and the Xavier Villaurrutia Literary Prize. Amanda Hopkinson is a Professor of Literary Translation at City, University of London and has translated over 40 books from Spanish, French, and Portuguese. She also writes on photography and is the author of History of Photography in Mexico (2019). Sophie Hughes has translated numerous Spanish and Latin American authors, most recently Laia Jufresa and Rodrigo Hasbún. She is currently at work on novels by Enrique Vila-Matas and Fernanda Melchor for New Directions.

Álvaro Enrigue was born in Mexico in 1969. He is an essayist, critic, professor, and the author of several novels and short story collections. His first novel La muerte de un instalador won the 1996 Joaquín Mortiz Prize. In 2007, the "Bogotá39" project named him one of the most promising Latin American writers of his generation.