Stella Gaitano was born in Khartoum in 1979 into a South Sudanese family. She studied English and Arabic at Khartoum University and trained as a pharmacist. When the Sudan was partitioned, she moved to Juba, the capital of South Sudan in 2012. In 2015 Gaitano had to move back to Khartoum, after having been harassed and attacked due to her criticism of the South Sudanese government for what she saw as its mismanagement, corruption, and its role in the South Sudanese civil war. In 2022 Gaitano was awarded a fellowship by the PEN International Writers-in-Exile programme and moved to Germany Sawad Hussain is an award-winning Arabic-English literary translator. She has an MA in Arabic literature from the School of Oriental and African Studies. She has translated two books for Dedalus: Catalogue of a Private Life by Najwa Bin Shatwan(2021) and Edo's Souls by Stella Gaitano(2024).