Anne Serre (b. 1960) is the author of seventeen works of fiction. Her first novel, Les Gouvernantes (The Governesses) was published in 1992 and praised by La Croix for its 'remarkable economy of style'. Among her distinctions are a 2008 Cino del Duca Foundation award and the 2020 Prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle for her short-story collection Au coeur d'un été tout en or. A Leopard-Skin Hat is the fourth of her books to appear in English.

Mark Hutchinson was born in London in 1957 and lives in Paris. Among his many translations from the French are René Char's Hypnos: Notes from the French Resistance and The Inventors and Other Poems, and Emmanuel Hocquard's The Library at Trieste and The Gardens of Sallust.