Nina Bouraoui was born in Rennes, France, to an Algerian father and a French mother. Shortly thereafter, she moved with her family to Algiers, where she lived until the age of thirteen. Bouraoui received the literary prize Prix du Livre Inter in 1991 and the Prix Renaudot in 2005. Marjorie Attignol Salvodon is an assistant professor of French at Suffolk University. Jehanne-Marie Gavarini is an associate professor of art at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and a visiting scholar at the Women's Studies Research Center at Brandeis University.