Czesław Miłosz was born in Lithuania in 1911 and lived in Poland until 1951, when he was granted asylum in France. He was the author of dozens of books, including the poetry books Facing the River and Collected Poems, and the prose volumes A Year of the Hunter and Beginning with My Streets. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980, and taught at the University of California, Berkeley from 1961 to 1998. He died in Kraków in 2004.

Leonard Nathan was the author of nine volumes of poetry, including Returning Your Call, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. The recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for poetry, and many other awards and honors, he was an avid bird watcher. He died in 2007.