Peter Soyer Beagle (born April 20, 1939) is an American author of novels, nonfiction, and screenplays, especially fantasy fiction. His best-known work is The Last Unicorn (1968), a fantasy novel he wrote in his twenties, which Locus subscribers voted the number five "All-Time Best Fantasy Novel" in 1987. During the last twenty-five years he has won several literary awards including a World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2011.

Beagle was born in Manhattan on April 20, 1939, the son of Rebecca Soyer and Simon Beagle.

Beagle won early recognition from The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, winning a scholarship to University of Pittsburgh for a poem he submitted as a high school senior. He went on to graduate from the university with a degree in creative writing.

Beagle wrote his first novel, A Fine and Private Place, when he was only 19 years old, following it with a memoir I See By My Outfit in 1965. Today he is best known as the author of The Last Unicorn, and A Fine and Private Place, as well as his later fantasies following The Folk of the Air.

Richard Henry Sellers, CBE (8 September 1925 – 24 July 1980), known as Peter Sellers, was a British comedian and actor. Perhaps best known as Chief Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther film series, he is also notable for playing three different characters in Dr. Strangelove, as Clare Quilty in Lolita, and as the TV-addicted man-child Chance the gardener in his penultimate film, Being There. Actress Bette Davis once remarked of him, "He isn't an actor—he's a chameleon."

Sellers rose to fame on the BBC Radio comedy series The Goon Show. His ability to speak in different accents (e.g., French, Indian, Italian, American, German, as well as British regional accents), along with his talent to portray a range of characters to comic effect, contributed to his success as a radio personality and screen actor and earned him national and international nominations and awards. Many of his characters became ingrained in public perception of his work. Sellers' private life was characterised by turmoil and crises, and included emotional problems and substance abuse. Sellers was married four times, and had three children from the first two marriages.

Michael Joseph Kurland (born 1938) is an American author, best known for his works of (in chronological order) science fiction and detective fiction.

Kurland's early career was devoted to works of science fiction. His first published novel was Ten Years to Doomsday (written with Chester Anderson) in 1964. Other notable works include Tomorrow Knight, Pluribus, Perchance, and The Unicorn Girl. The Unicorn Girl was the middle volume of the Greenwich Village Trilogy by three different authors, the other two being Chester Anderson and T.A. Waters. (Anderson's book, The Butterfly Kid, was nominated for a Hugo Award). Kurland has also written two novels, Ten Little Wizards and A Study in Sorcery, set in the world of Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy, prefiguring his later success as a mystery writer.

Following the success of The Infernal Device, which was nominated for an Edgar Award (as was his earlier A Plague of Spies), Kurland turned his attention to detective fiction. Several of his subsequent novels have been sequels to The Infernal Device, and feature Sherlock Holmes's nemesis, Professor Moriarty. In this series, Professor Moriarty is an antihero (and sometimes a real hero) who resignedly tolerates Holmes's obsessively exaggerated opinion of his criminal empire, and is often brought into reluctant alliance with his nemesis in order to counter menaces ranging from threats to their associates to threats to the nation.