Alejandro Zambra is a Chilean writer, poet, and critic. His first novel Bonsai was awarded Chile's Literary Critics' Award for Best Novel. He is also the author of The Private Lives of Trees and Ways of Going Home, which won the Altazor Award and the National Council Prize for Books, both for the best Chilean novel. My Documents, published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2015, was shortlisted for the 2015 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Prize. His latest novel is Multiple Choice. His writing has been translated into more than fifteen languages and has appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, Tin House, Harper's, Granta and McSweeney's, among other places. He was a 2015-16 Cullman Center fellow at the New York Public Library. He lives in Mexico City.

Megan McDowell has translated many contemporary authors from Latin America and Spain, including Alejandro Zambra, Samanta Schweblin, Mariana Enriquez, Lina Meruane, Diego Zúñiga, and Carlos Fonseca. Her translations have been published in the New Yorker, Tin House, Paris Review, Harper's, McSweeney's, Words Without Borders, and Vice, among others. Her translation of Alejandro Zambra's Ways of Going Home won the 2013 English PEN award for writing in translation, and her translation of Samanta Schweblin's Fever Dream was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2017. She lives in Santiago, Chile.