Bruce Bawer is the author of the new novel The Alhambra (Swamp Fox Editions). His book While Europe Slept (2006) was a New York Times bestseller and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. His other books include A Place at the Table (1993), Stealing Jesus (1997), Surrender (2009), and The Victims' Revolution (2012). A native New Yorker, he has lived in Europe since 1998.
Bahareh Hedayat is a human rights activist who has spent over six years in an Iranian prison for "insulting" Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and for "actions against national security, propagation of falsehoods, mutiny and illegal congregation." Hedayat is the longest serving female prisoner of conscience in Iran.