China

Qiu Xiaolong (裘小龙) was born in Shanghai, China. He is the author of the award-winning Inspector Chen series of mystery novels, Death of a Red Heroine (2000), A Loyal Character Dancer (2002), When Red Is Black (2004), A Case of Two Cities (2006), Red Mandarin Dress (2007), and The Mao Case (2009). He is also the author of two books of poetry translations, Treasury of Chinese Love Poems (2003) and Evoking T'ang (2007), and his own poetry collection, Lines Around China (2003). Qiu's books have sold over a million copies and have been published in twenty languages. He currently lives in St. Louis with his wife and daughter. 

Paul French is the Chief China Representative of Access Asia, a market research and business intelligence company specialising in China and North Asia's economics and markets. He was educated in London and at the University of Glasgow. He is the co-author of One Billion Shoppers - Accessing Asia's Consuming Passions(1998) and author of Carl Crow - A Tough Old China Hand: The Life, Times, and Adventures of an American in Shanghai (2006). He lives in Shanghai. 

Ingrid Noll, the German queen of crime fiction is one of the most appreciated German female authors. Her writing consists of imagination and the experiences she gathered while living in postwar Germany.

Diane Wei Liang was born in Beijing. She spent part of her childhood with her parents in a labor camp in a remote region of China, and the other part in Beijing with her mother when her parents were forced to live and work in different cities. She studied psychology at Peking University. In 1989 she took part in the Student Democracy Movement and was in Tiananmen Square. Later that year, she left China for the U.S. Liang has a PhD in Business Administration from Carnegie Mellon University and was a business professor in the U.S. and U.K. for over ten years. She lives in London with her family.