Narges Mohammadi—Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, journalist, and author—was born in 1972, in Zanjan, Iran. For over two decades, Mohammadi has been one of the most courageous voices in Iranian civil society, campaigning against the death penalty and gender-based oppression. Her work focuses on challenging state violence, including executions, sexual abuse in detention, and the systematic legal discrimination against women. Having spent more than a decade of her life in prison, Mohammadi is currently serving a sentence of which18 years remain.

Maria Navarro Skaranger (b. 1994) is one of the most distinctive and original writers of her generation. Skaranger has won the EU Prize for Literature (2020) and the Oktober Prize (2021), and for Emily Forever (2021) she was nominated for the Booksellers’ Prize, the Critics’ Prize and the Young People’s Critics’ Prize. Her third novel, Whistling in the Dark Wind (2023), was nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. In 2022, Skaranger was awarded the Sult Prize for her body of work.