FRANCESCA BORRI was born in Bari, Italy. She initially worked as a human rights adviser in the Middle East, especially in Israel and Palestine, before turning to journalism in 2012 to cover the battle for Aleppo. Since then, her dispatches have been translated into twenty-one languages. Five years and 500,000 deaths later, she still lives in Syria and Iraq, and in between one ceasefire and the next, she writes about Palestinians for Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s main newspaper. She is the author of Syrian Dust (Seven Stories Press, 2016).

ANNE MILANO APPEL was awarded the Italian Prose in Translation Award (2015), the John Florio Prize for Italian Translation (2013), and the Northern California Book Award for Translation— Fiction (2014, 2013). She has translated works by Claudio Magris, Primo Levi, Paolo Giordano, Andrea Canobbio, Giuseppe Catozzella, Roberto Saviano, and numerous others.