Hillary Chute is an American literary scholar and an expert on comics and graphic narratives. She is Distinguished Professor of English and Art + Design at Northeastern University. She was formerly associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Chicago and an associate faculty member of the University’s Department of Visual Arts, as well as a visiting professor at Harvard University. She was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows from 2007 to 2010.

Linda Jean Barry, known professionally as Lynda Barry, is an American cartoonist. Barry is best known for her weekly comic strip Ernie Pook's Comeek. She garnered attention with her 1988 illustrated novel The Good Times are Killing Me, about an interracial friendship between two young girls, which was adapted into a play. Her second illustrated novel, Cruddy, first appeared in 1999. Three years later she published One! Hundred! Demons!, a graphic novel she terms "autobifictionalography". What It Is (2008) is a graphic novel that is part memoir, part collage and part workbook, in which Barry instructs her readers in methods to open up their own creativity; it won the comics industry's 2009 Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work.