Roger Allen is professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. Hilary Kilpatrick has taught Arabic literature at the Universities of Nijmegen and Bern. She has published on both classical and modern Arabic prose literature. Ed de Moor is reader in Arabic literature at the University of Nijmegen and editor of "Orientations," the annual publication of the Dutch Association for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. He has written widely on Arabic literature, particularly on modern poetry.