Beverly Jenkins is the recipient of the 2018 Michigan Author Award, the 2017 Romance Writers of America Lifetime Achievement Award, and the 2016 Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award for historical romance. She has been nominated for the NAACP Image Award in Literature and was featured both in the documentary Love between the Covers and on CBS Sunday Morning. Her work has been praised by the Wall Street Journal, People magazine, and NPR.

Adenrele Ojo is an actress, dancer, and audiobook narrator, winner of over a dozen Earphones Awards and the prestigious Audie Award for best narration in 2018. She made her on-screen debut in My Little Girl, starring Jennifer Lopez, and has since starred in several other films. She has also performed extensively with the Philadelphia Dance Company. As the daughter of John E. Allen, Jr., founder and artistic director of Freedom Theatre, the oldest African American theater in Pennsylvania, is no stranger to the stage. In 2010 she performed in the Fountain Theatre's production of The Ballad of Emmett Till, which won the 2010 LA Stage Alliance Ovation Award and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award for Best Ensemble. Other plays include August Wilson's Jitney and Freedom Theatre's own Black Nativity, where she played Mary.