Marilyn Hacker is the coauthor of A Different Distance. She is an editor, translator, and author of sixteen collections of poetry. Her first book, Presentation Piece, received the National Book Award for Poetry in 1974. Hacker is a winner of the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize, the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, the National Poetry Series Robert Fagels Translation Prize, and the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry. She has been an editor for the Kenyon Review and Ploughshares, Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and professor of English at the City College of New York. She lives in Paris, France.

Karthika Naïr is the coauthor of A Different Distance. She is a dance producer and curator, and author of four books, including, most recently, Until the Lions: Echoes from the Mahabharata, a retelling of the ancient epic in multiple poetic forms. Naïr is also the principal scriptwriter for the dance production DESH, choreographed and performed by Akram Khan. Naïr's poetry has been published in Granta, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Review (UK), the Literary Review, Poetry International, Indian Literature, The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets, and the Forward Book of Poetry 2017. She lives in Paris, France.