Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) was born in Lancashire, England, to an industrialist father and an Irish mother. She was raised on fantastical folktales told to her by her Irish nanny at her family’s estate, Crookhey Hall. A renowned artist as well as a writer, she lived a majority of her life in Mexico City, moving in a circle of like-minded artists that included Remedios Varo and Alejandro Jodorowsky. Her surrealistic paintings and sculptures have been hosted in galleries and museums all over the world. A novel, The Hearing Trumpet; a memoir of madness, Down Below; and an illustrated group of stories for children, The Milk of Dreams, are all available from New York Review Books.

Gabriel Weisz Carrington is a poet, playwright, theatre researcher and comparative literature researcher. He collaborated with Leonora Carrington in a few creative endeavours; a joint project with the Dark Book, building sets for theatre, cinema and assisting Leonora with a few sculptures. He holds a doctorate in Comparative Literature and is a professor of Comparative Literature at Universidad Autónoma de México. He is the first-born son of Leonora.

Anna Watz is Associate Professor (Docent) of English Literature. She is the author of Angela Carter and Surrealism: 'A Feminist Libertarian Aesthetic' and editor of A History of the Surrealist Novel and Surrealist Women's Writing: A Critical Exploration. Her second monograph, Surrealism and Feminine Difference, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.