Juan Felipe Herrera is a performance artist and activist on behalf of migrant and indigenous communities and at-risk youth. His creative work often crosses genres, including poetry, opera and dance theater. His children's book, The Upside Down Boy (2000), was adapted into a musical. His books for young people have won several awards, including Calling the Doves (2001), winner of the Ezra Jack Keats Award, and CrashBoomLove (1999), a novel-in-verse for young adults, which won the Americas Award. His poetry collection Half of the World in Light was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle prize in 2009. Herrera lives in Fresno, CA.

Artemio Rodríguez is an artist from Michoacán, Mexico, born in 1972. He came to the United States in 1994 and lived for a time in Los Angeles, where he began the work that would ultimately become the Lotería series. He has been living in the Bay Area since 1996, and his work is shown in galleries and museums throughout Mexico and the U.S.