Shoham Smith was born in Jerusalem in 1966, grew up in the Jor­dan Val­ley and stud­ied indus­tri­al design at the Beza­lel Acad­e­my of Art and Design at Tel Aviv Uni­ver­si­ty. An author of col­lec­tions of short sto­ries and children’s books, Smith received the 2009 Prime Minister’s Prize and is a two-time win­ner of the ACUM Award for Fur­ther­ing the Pub­li­ca­tion of Children’s Books, in 2011 and 2015. Smith has also won the Devo­rah Omer Prize (2014) and the Lea Gold­berg Prize in 2017, for _A Trea­sury of Hebrew Leg­ends for Children_​and _​My Aunt Lea Goldberg_​respec­tive­ly. Smith lives in Tel Aviv and works as an author and trans­la­tor. She lives with her part­ner and three chil­dren and teach­es writ­ing workshops.

Vali Mintzi was born in Bucharest, Roma­nia in 1971, and made Aliyah to Israel in 1989. Mintzi grad­u­at­ed from the Beza­lel Acad­e­my of Art and Design Jerusalem. In 2009, Mintzi began illus­trat­ing for children’s books with Who is the Fairy Queen and was award­ed the Israel Muse­um Ben-Yitzhak Award for Illus­tra­tions of Children’s Books in 2012 for Lit­tle One in the Park. Mintzi is also a suc­cess­ful graph­ic design­er, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly been Art Direc­tor for Haaretz’s children’s mag­a­zine, Einay­im, and worked at the Israel Muse­um. Mintzi cur­rent­ly lives in Jerusalem with her part­ner and three daugh­ters, and works as an illus­tra­tor, graph­ic design­er and pup­petry designer.