Anne Inez McCaffrey (1926–2011) was an American-born Irish writer, best known for the Dragonriders of Pern science fiction series. Early in McCaffrey’s forty-six-year career as a writer, she became the first woman to win a Hugo Award for fiction and the first to win a Nebula Award. Her 1978 novel The White Dragon became one of the first science fiction books to appear on the New York Times bestseller list. In 1999, she was the recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award, honoring her lifetime contribution to writing for teens. In 2005 the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named McCaffrey its twenty-second Grand Master, an annual award to living writers of fantasy and science fiction. She was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2006.

Jody Lynn Nye is known for her numerous works of science fiction and fantasy, including An Unexpected Apprentice and its sequel, A Forthcoming Wizard; Applied Mythology; Advanced Mythology; and others. She has collaborated with New York Times best-selling author Anne McCaffrey on The Death of Sleep, The Ship Who Won, Doona and other novels, and with another New York Times best-selling author, Robert Asprin, in his “Myth” series.