ANNA KAVAN (1901–1968) was born Helen Woods. She began her career writing under her married name Helen Ferguson, publishing six novels. It was only after she had a nervous breakdown that she became Anna Kavan, the protagonist of her 1930 novel Let Me Alone, with an outwardly different persona and a new literary style. Much of her life remains an enigma, but her talent was nonetheless remarkable, and her works have been compared to those of Doris Lessing, Virginia Woolf, and Franz Kafka. Kavan suffered periodic bouts of mental illness and long-term drug addiction—she became addicted to heroin in the 1920s and continued to use it throughout her life—and these facets of her life feature prominently in her work. Her widely admired works include Asylum Piece, I Am Lazarus, and Julia and the Bazooka (published posthumously). She died in 1968 of heart failure, soon after the publication of her most celebrated work, Ice.
安娜-卡万（1901-1968 年）出生于海伦-伍兹。她以婚后的名字海伦-弗格森（Helen Ferguson）开始写作生涯，共出版了六部小说。直到她精神崩溃后，她才成为安娜-卡万，即 1930 年小说《让我一个人》中的主人公，她拥有了不同的外在形象和新的文学风格。她的大部分人生经历至今仍是一个谜，但她才华横溢，其作品被拿来与多丽丝-莱辛、弗吉尼亚-伍尔夫和弗朗茨-卡夫卡的作品相提并论。卡万患上精神疾病，并长期吸毒成瘾--她在 20 世纪 20 年代开始吸食海洛因，并终生未戒。她的作品广受推崇，包括《精神病院小品》、《我是拉撒路》和《朱莉娅和火箭筒》（死后出版）。1968 年，在她最著名的作品《冰》出版后不久，她因心脏衰竭去世。
JONATHAN LETHEM is the New York Times bestselling author of nine novels, including Dissident Gardens, Chronic City, The Fortress of Solitude, and Motherless Brooklyn, and of the essay collection The Ecstasy of Influence, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, Lethem’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and The New York Times, among other publications.
前言的作者乔纳森-莱特希姆是《纽约时报》畅销书作家，著有九部小说，包括《异见花园》、《慢性城市》、《孤独的堡垒》和《没有母亲的布鲁克林》，散文集《影响力的狂喜》曾入围美国国家书评人奖决赛。作为麦克阿瑟奖（MacArthur Fellowship）获得者和美国国家书评人协会小说奖（National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction）获得者，莱特姆的作品曾刊登在《纽约客》（The New Yorker）、《哈珀杂志》（Harper's Magazine）、《滚石》（Rolling Stone）、《时尚先生》（Esquire）和《纽约时报》（The New York Times）等刊物上。
KATE ZAMBRENO is the author of the novels Green Girl and O Fallen Angel, as well as two works of experimental nonfiction, Heroines and Book of Mutter. She is at work on a series of books about time, memory, and the persistence of art. She teaches in the writing programs at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University.
后记的作者凯特-赞布瑞诺（KATE ZAMBRENO）著有长篇小说《绿草原》（Green Girland）和《堕落天使》（Fallen Angel），以及两部实验性非虚构作品《巾帼英雄》（Heroines）和《穆特之书》（Book of Mutter）。她在萨拉-劳伦斯学院和哥伦比亚大学的写作课程任教。