May Swenson was born in Logan, Utah in 1913, the first of ten children. As a child, she played in the willows and along a canal that carried water from the nearby mountains through her small town, just as the speaker in "The Centaur" does. Eleven volumes of her poetry were published during her lifetime, earning her dozens of awards, membership in the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. During the last years of her life, she served as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. May died in 1989 and is buried less than a mile from her canal in “The Centaur.”
Sherry Meidell lives in West Bountiful, Utah, and coincidentally spent many childhood summers near May Swenson's home. A member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, she specializes in brushes and watercolor with pencil for detail. The Centaur is the ninth book she has illustrated.