Guido Crepax was born in Milan, Italy, in 1933. After acquiring a degree in architecture, he worked on award-winning advertising campaigns for such corporations as Shell and Dunlop. He went on to become one of Italy's most important cartoonists, most famous for his psychedelic and erotic Valentina stories. Some of her exploits were adapted into a TV series and a film. He died in 2003. Alain Robbe-Grillet (1922-2008) was an influential French writer and filmmaker associated with the Nouveau Roman movement in novels such as Le Voyeur and La Jalousie. His film collaborations, such as Last Year at Marienbad (with Alain Resnais), won prizes and Academy Award nominations. Writer and translator Micol Arianna Beltramini achieved success with the bestseller 101 Things to Do in Milan at Least Once in a Lifetime (Newton Compton 2008). After publishing two novels, she devoted herself to comics, editing a series for Edizioni BD, Psycho Pop, and editing and writing some of the stories that appear in Viva Valentina! (Edizioni BD 2016), the first collection of short stories about the character not written and drawn by Guido Crepax.