János Lackfi was born in Budapest in 1971 and obtained a degree in Hungarian and French at Eötvös Loránd University, where he also earned a doctorate. He has been teaching at Pázmány Péter Catholic University since 1996 as one of the head instructors, along with poet István Vörös, in the Creative Writing programme. The editor for the periodical World and the web journal Dokk.hu, he is a member of the Hungarian Writers' Association and the József Attila Circle. He has received numerous awards and recognitions over the past 25 years, including the Attila Gérecz Award (1992), the Attila József Award (2000), the Tibor Déry Award (2001), and the Children's Book of the Year Award (2004 and 2008) the Éva Janikovszky Award (2010) and the Prima Primissima Award (2013).