Author Monika Feth was born in 1951 in Hagen, Germany. She studied literature and now lives in a country village where she writes books for children and young adults. Her books include The Happy Street Sign Cleaner, The Collector of Thoughts, and The Painter, The City, and The Sea. She has won many awards for her books.

Illustrator Antoni Boratynski is very good at drawing pictures that express abstract ideas. That’s why he won the award for his pictures in the illustration division of the Austrian Children’s and Young Adult’s Literature Awards. He has not only illustrated The Happy Street Sign Cleaner, but also other books by Monika Feth including The Collector of Thoughts, and The Painter, The City, and The Sea.

Translator Alyssa Kim is an assistant professor in the department of Interpretation and Transation at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. She also works as a freelance translator for leading theater and film companies in Seoul. She cotranslated Allegory of Survival: The Theatre of Kang-Baek Lee (2007), translated Feeling, Like Nirvana and Choe Seonghui in Modern Korean Drama (2009). She is presently translating Kwanglim Kim's plays into English.

Coordinator Kyung-Yun Kim studied at Seoul National University and received her PhD in German Literature there. She also did research at Frankfurt University on German young adult fantastic fiction. She has translated many books into Korean, including The Happy Street Sign Cleaner, The Collector of Thoughts, and The Painter, The City, and The Sea.