Hilary Fannin (b. 1962) worked for many years as an actress both on stage and in television. A founder member of Wet Paint Arts theatre company, her first play, Mackerel Sky, was performed at the Bush Theatre (1997). She has written two radio plays: Red Feathers, and Dear Exile, both broadcast by BBC Radio 4. Sleeping Around, co-written with Stephen Greenhorn, Abi Morgan and Mark Ravenhill, was produced by Paines Plough, London in 1998, while Red Ball, which was commissioned by the Abbey Theatre's Education and Outreach Department, was performed by the National Association of Youth Drama in 2004. Fannin was joint Writer-in-Association at the Abbey Theatre for the centenary year.

Maxim Gorky was born Alexei Maximovich Peshkov in Nizhny Novgorod, 225 miles east of Moscow, in 1868. By 1878 both his parents were dead and he spent his youth as a nomadic labourer. In 1898 his collection of Stories and Sketches was published and proved an immediate success. His plays include The Lower Depths (1902), Summerfolk (1904), Children of the Sun (1905), Barbarians and Enemies (1906) and Yegor Bulichev (1932). His other books include Childhood and My Universities and the novel The Mother. A socialist from his early days, he never joined the Communist Party. He offered qualified support to the Soviet state after 1918, living abroad from 1924 to 1932. In 1934 he became head of the Writers' Union but his work showed an increasing awareness that something had gone wrong with the revolution. He died in 1936.