The Diamond Setter

Moshe Sakal was born in Tel Aviv in 1976 into a Jewish-Arab family of Damascene and Cairene descent. He has lived in Paris and, since 2019, in Berlin, where he became a German citizen. He is the author of six Hebrew novels, including the best-selling Yolanda, and a regular contributor to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. His essays have also appeared in Le Monde, Libération, and Haaretz. He is the cofounder of Altneuland Press, the first secular Hebrew literary publisher established outside Israel since 1948. A two-time Sapir Prize nominee and recipient of the Levi Eshkol Prize, a Fulbright Scholar, and an Honorary Fellow at the University of Iowa's International Writing Program, Sakal was also awarded the Berlin Senate Grant for Non-German Literature in 2021.

Jessica Cohen is a freelance translator born in England, raised in Israel, and living in Denver. She translates contemporary Israeli prose, poetry, and other creative work. Her translations include David Grossman's critically acclaimed A Horse Walks into a Bar (winner of the 2017 Man Booker International Prize), and works by major Israeli writers including Etgar Keret, Rutu Modan, Dorit Rabinyan and Ronit Matalon, as well as Golden Globe-winning director Ari Folman. She is a past board member of the American Literary Translators Association and has served as a judge for the National Translation Award.