Francisco Goldman is the author of three novels: The Long Night of White Chickens, The Ordinary Seaman, and The Divine Husband. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and has been a fellow at the New York Public Library Center for Scholars and Writers. His fiction and journalism have appeared in, among other publications, The New Yorker, Harper's, The New York Review of Books, and The New York Times Magazine.

Juan E. Méndez is President of the International Center for Transitional Justice. Until March 31, 2007, he was also, concurrently, the Special Advisor to the Secretary General (UN) on Prevention of Genocide. At Human Rights Watch he directed the Americas division (1982-1993) and was later General Counsel (1994-1996). He was Executive Director of the Inter‑American Institute of Human Rights in Costa Rica (1996-1999). From 2000 to 2003 he was a member—and in 2002 the President—of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Organization of American States. He has taught at the University of Notre Dame Law School (1999-2004) where he was also the Director of the Center for Civil and Human Rights. Earlier he had taught at Georgetown Law School and Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and he teaches regularly at the Oxford Masters Program in International Human Rights Law. He has published several articles and edited volumes on the Inter-American system of human rights protection, on transitional justice, on torture and forced disappearances, and on human rights developments in Latin America. He was born in Argentina and has practiced law there and in the United States.