Don DeLillo is the author of seventeen novels including Underworld, Zero K, Libra, and White Noise, and the story collection The Angel Esmeralda, a finalist for the Story Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He has also written plays and essays. He has won the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the PEN/Saul Bellow Award, the Jerusalem Prize for his complete body of work, the William Dean Howells Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and, in 2025, the Academy's Gold Medal for Fiction. DeLillo has been awarded the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction and the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

Tony Shalhoub is an Emmy-, Tony-, and Golden Globe–winning actor whose career spans film, television, and theater. He is best known for his roles in Monk, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and Wings, and has appeared in dozens of acclaimed films and television projects. On Broadway, he has performed in The Band’s Visit, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical, as well as Conversations with My Father, Golden Boy, and Act One. He has also received multiple Screen Actors Guild Awards, among numerous other honors recognizing his work on stage and screen. We Thought They’d Never Leave is his debut book.