Mary Mercier is a writer inspired by nature, flight, and the barking of crows. For 20 years she served as a college advisor for students in environmental studies, where she became interested in the lives of endangered species, from cranes to wolves to butterflies. Today she divides her time between writing poetry and picture books. Her most recent books include the Birdy Poetry Prize Finalist Five Reports of Fugitive Dust (Meadowlark Press), and her debut picture book, The Butterfly Boat (Clavis Publishing).

Belle Machiels (Belgium, 1999) discovered her passion for drawing at a young age when she moved to Norway with her family in 2005. Here she grew up in a small village surrounded by forests and mountains. The mythical Norwegian nature inspired her to create magical and dreamlike worlds. She was also fascinated by children's book illustrations and animated films. In 2015, she moved to live with her father, who was living in Belgium at the time. Here, she further developed her drawing style and studied art at secondary school in Hasselt. She then studied animated film at Luca School of Arts, but after graduating, she decided to focus on illustration instead. Since 2022, she has been living and working in Norway, in the place where she grew up as a child.