Shirley Hazzard was born in Sydney, Australia on January 30, 1931. Before becoming an author in the early 1960s, she went to work for the British Combined Intelligence Services in Hong Kong, was an employee of the British High Commissioner's Office in Wellington, New Zealand, and was a technical assistant to under-developed countries for the United Nations. Her first book, Cliffs of Fall and Other Stories, was published in 1963. Her other books include The Evening of the Holiday, People in Glass Houses, The Bay of Noon, Greene on Capri, Countenance of Truth: The United Nations and the Waldheim Case, Defeat of an Ideal, and The Ancient Shore: Dispatches From Naples written with her husband Francis Steegmuller. She won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction in 1980 for The Transit of Venus and the National Book Award for fiction in 2003 for The Great Fire. She died on December 12, 2016 at the age of 85.
Zoe Heller has been a contributing editor of Vanity Fair and a staff member of the London Sunday Times, the Times Supplement, Esquire, Vogue, the London Review of Books and The New York Times. Her 2003 novel, What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal, earned tremendous acclaim, including a spot on the short list for the prestigious Man Booker Prize. The audio release coincided with the 2007 film adaptation, Notes on a Scandal, starring Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench. She was born and educated in Britain and now divides her time between Brooklyn, NY and Bucks County, PA.