Salman Rushdie’s most recent novel, Quichotte, was shortlisted for this year's Booker Prize. He is the author of thirteen previous novels—Grimus, Midnight's Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker), Shame, The Satanic Verses, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, The Moor's Last Sigh, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Fury, Shalimar the Clown, The Enchantress of Florence, Luka and the Fire of Life, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, and The Golden House—and one collection of short stories: East, West. He has also published four works of nonfiction—Joseph Anton, The Jaguar Smile, Imaginary Homelands, and Step Across This Line—and co-edited two anthologies, Mirrorwork and Best American Short Stories 2008. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. A former president of PEN American Center, Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for services to literature.

Ted Hartley was born in Omaha, Nebraska, to the president of Northwestern Bell Telephone Company (AT&T). Ted Hartley received his education at Annapolis, Georgetown University, where he became a U.S. Olympic wrestling finalist, as well as Harvard Business School. As a Navy-carrier-based jet fighter pilot, he served in widely ranging areas of the world, including two years as a White House aide in the Kennedy-Eisenhower era. At 30, he suffered injuries from an aircraft accident and was forced into disability retirement as a Lieutenant Commander.

As a civilian, he became Executive Vice President of First Western Financial Corporation. He moved out of banking and while in Los Angeles on a job interview, by a fluke he was invited to play a continuing role in a dramatic television series, Peyton Place, as the Reverend Jerry Bradford. This role led to co-starring roles in movies with Clint Eastwood, Cary Grant, Dean Martin, and Robert Redford, among others. He later took over as CEO of RKO Pictures. As CEO, he has produced a dozen films and a number of television movies. He expanded RKO into Broadway with productions including Gypsy (2008), 13 (2008), Big Fish (2013), Curtains (2007) as lead producer, and Never Gonna Dance (2003) and Dr. Zhivago (2015). He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Oscars) and a Tony voter.

He was married to the late Dina Merrill, the actress. He has one son and two grandsons. More than a decade ago, Dina was entering into what would be a long period of declining health. Ted, looking for ways to keep her active emotionally and mentally, initiated twice a week art classes in their home, inviting Dina's friends to join. "It gave her pals an easy way to see her and to do something together." He found personal satisfaction in his own artwork as well. After Dina's death, her friends wanted to continue the classes and Hartley started it up again. Now fully exploring his own found passion in painting, he progressed from representational art into more daring subjective expressionism. In the fall of 2019, his first one-artist opening at Keyes Art in Sag Harbor sold out most of the offerings.