Lara Marlowe was born in California and studied French at UCLA and the Sorbonne, then International Relations at Oxford. She started her career as an associate producer with CBS's 60 Minutes programme, then shifted to print media with the Financial Times and TIME Magazine. She has reported for a host of broadcast and print media, and was a staff foreign correspondent, based in Paris and Washington, for the Irish Times from 1996 until 2023. Marlowe is a leading journalist on the Middle East as well as domestic French politics. For her contribution to Franco-Irish relations she was made Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur in 2006. Marlowe is the author of Love in a Time of War (2021), The Things I've Seen (2010) and Painted with Words (2011).

Lieutenant Yulia Mykytenko was born on 18 July 1955 in Kyiv. She was in the ‘Female Squad’ of the 16th regiment of the Self-Defence Force during the Euromaidan protests and now serves as the lieutenant of a frontline drone unit in Donbas. In October 2022, she was awarded the Order for Courage by decree of the President of Ukraine.

Both author and subject are available to promote--Marlowe from Dublin and Paris, Mykytenko from Ukraine. Mykytenko may need an interpreter for in-depth discussion but she enjoys speaking English and will be fine on top-line radio chats or written correspondence.