David Foster Wallace (Nueva York, 1962-California, 2008) es para muchos el novelista más importante de su generación. Publicada en 1987, La escoba del sistema fue su debut literario. Tres años después publicó La niña del pelo raro (Literatura Random House, 2000), relatos con los que captó la atención de la crítica. Su siguiente obra es la monumental y reconocida novela La broma infinita (Literatura Random House, 2002), que ha sido considerada por la revista Time una de las cien mejores novelas en lengua inglesa. En Literatura Random House se han publicado además Entrevistas breves con hombres repulsivos (2001), Algo supuestamente divertido que nunca volveré a hacer (2001), Extinción (2005), Hablemos de langostas (2011), su novela póstuma El rey pálido (2011), En cuerpo y en lo otro (2013), el legendario discurso pronunciado en la ceremonia de graduación en la Universidad de Kenyon, Esto esagua (2014), El tenis como experiencia religiosa (2016) y David Foster Wallace Portátil (2016), una recopilación de su obra más representativa. En septiembre de 2008 David Foster Wallace, que sufría una fuerte depresión, se suicidó en su casa de California.

Mark Costello, who worked as a federal prosecutor, is the author of the National Book Award Finalist Big If. He lives in New York. David Foster Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York, in 1962 and raised in Illinois, where he was a regionally ranked junior tennis player. He received bachelor of arts degrees in philosophy and English from Amherst College and wrote what would become his first novel, The Broom of the System, as his senior English thesis. He received a masters of fine arts from University of Arizona in 1987 and briefly pursued graduate work in philosophy at Harvard University. His second novel, Infinite Jest, was published in 1996. Wallace taught creative writing at Emerson College, Illinois State University, and Pomona College, and published the story collections Girl with Curious Hair, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Oblivion, the essay collections A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, and Consider the Lobster. He was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and a Whiting Writers' Award, and was appointed to the Usage Panel for The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. He died in 2008. His last novel, The Pale King, was published in 2011.