Wajdi Mouawad spent his childhood in Lebanon, his adolescence in France, his young adult years in Quebec, and now lives in France. A 1991 graduate of Canada's National School of Dramatic Arts, he has adapted and directed contemporary and classic plays as well as his own. He was artistic director of the Théâtre de Quat'Sous in Montreal from 2000 to 2004 and of the Théâtre français du Centre National des Arts in Ottawa from 2007 to 2012. With the creative companies he founded, Abé Carré Cé Carré in Quebec and Au Carré de l'Hypoténuse in France, he was an associate artist at the Avignon Festival in 2009, where he created Le Sang des Promesses, composed of Littoral, Incendies, Forêts and Ciels. After his last creation Temps in 2011, he turned to the staging of the seven tragedies of Sophocles, comprising the opus Des Femmes in 2011, followed by Des Héros and Des Mourants.

The recipient of numerous awards, including the Governor General's Award for Littoral in 2000 and the Prix de la Francophonie from the Société des auteurs compositeurs dramatiques in 2004 for his body of work, he was named Chevalier de l'Ordre National des Arts et Lettres in 2002, Three years later, he was named a Knight of the Order of Canada, and he received an honorary doctorate from the Ecole Normale Supérieure des Lettres et Sciences humaines de Lyon and the Grand Prix du théâtre from the Académie française. His plays have been translated into more than fifteen languages and performed all over the world, including Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, Mexico, Australia and the United States.

Born in Beirut in 1942, Paul Chaoul is a poet, playwright, literary critic, and leading translator of French poetry and plays. He is currently editor-in-chief of the cultural page of the daily al-Mustaqbal. One of the country's most prominent social critics and advocates of freedom of expression, he co-founded the short-lived Lebanese Movement of Conscience party.

At the heart of his poetry is his assertion that he never speaks for anyone, that a poet is his own manifesto. In 1984 he published two very different collections: Hawa' Shaghir [Empty Air] and Mita Tidhkariya [Commemorative Death]. In fact, like these works, Chaoul's poetry characteristically alternates between the nakedness of the word and its symbolic content. 

In addition to his numerous collections of poetry, including La boussole du sang, Les feuillets de l'absent, Visage qui sombre, and La mort de Narcisse, he has published two books on modern Maghrebian culture and Arab theater. He has also written plays such as Choukri le suicidaire and Le visiteur. Chaoul is the author of an anthology of French poetry: Le livre de la poésie française contemporaine; 1st edition (1900-1980), Dar Attalia'a', Beirut, 1981; 2nd expanded edition (1900-1985), Dar al-Farabi, 1986. He is preparing a third edition covering the years 1900-2000. His latest collection of poems has just been published in Beirut: Comme un long mois d'amour, ed. Riad el-Rayess.

He published his first volume of poetry in 1974, and has also published works on Arabic drama and theater, and a major anthology of 20th-century French poetry. Some of his poems have been translated into French, German and English.