Kenneth Koch has published many volumes of poetry, including New Addresses, Straits and One Train. He was awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry in 1995, in 1996 he received the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry awarded by the Library of Congress, and he received the first Phi Beta Kappa Poetry award in November of 2001. His short plays, many of them produced off- and off-off-Broadway, are collected in The Gold Standard: A Book of Plays. He has also written several books about poetry, including Wishes, Lies, and Dreams; Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?; and, most recently, Making Your Own Days: The Pleasures of Reading and Writing Poetry. He taught undergraduates at Columbia University for many years. He passed away in 2002.

Kate Farrell began collaborating with Kenneth Koch while still his student at Columbia University, working as his fellow teacher in the Nursing Home project on which his book I Never Told Anybody is based. After graduating, she taught poetry in high schools in the NY State Poets in the Schools Program, a key inspiration for Sleeping on the Wing. Koch and Farrell also co-authored Talking to the Sun, an anthology for young people, illustrated by works from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Farrell went on to assemble four more anthologies of poetry matched with art for the Metropolitan Museum and the National Gallery. She has taught imaginative writing at Columbia University and her poetry has appeared in many journals, including Poetry, Partisan Review, Hudson Review and Harvard Review. Her work was also chosen for three recent editions of The Best Spiritual Writing series.