Manlio Argueta was born in San Miguel, El Salvador in 1935. He left the country in 1972 and lived in exile in Costa Rica, where he taught literature and creative writing until the end of the Salvadoran Civil War. His second novel, Caperucita en la zona rosa, received the Casa de las Americas Prize in 1977. His third, Un día en la vida, was banned in El Salvador during the civil war but earned fifth place on the Modern Library's 100 best Latin American novels of the twentieth century. He currently lives in San Salvador.

Edward Waters Hood has translated works by several prominent Central American authors. He is currently a professor of Latin American Literature at Northern Arizona University.