Ruth

Elizabeth Gaskell was born in London in 1810. In 1832 she married William Gaskell, with whom she had four daughters. For over a decade, she wrote for Charles Dickens’s magazine Household Words, where she serially published North and South in its first format. Her other works include the novels Mary Barton, Cranford, Ruth, and Wives and Daughters, as well as a biography of Charlotte Brontë. She died in 1865.

Rufi Thorpe is the author of five novels, The Girls from Corona Del Mar, Dear Fang, With Love, The Knockout Queen, and Margo's Got Money Troubles, which has been adapted for television by A24 and Apple TV. She received her MFA from the University of Virginia, and now lives in California with her husband and two sons.