Camilo José Cela (1916-2002) won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1989. Though he wrote prolifically and audaciously in a number of different genres, he is best known for his novel The Hive, which was published in Argentina in 1951 after being banned in Franco's Spain. In addition to his writing, he produced drawings and paintings and also appeared in several films.

James Womack is a poet and a translator from Russian and Spanish. His most recent poetry collection, Homunculus, was published by the UK press Carcanet in 2020. His translations include Manuel Vilas's Heaven and a collection of poetry by Vladimir Mayakovsky. He is an editor at Calque Press and teaches at Cambridge University.