Richard Pevear was born in Waltham, Massachusetts. He has published translations of Alain, Yves Bonnefoy, Alberto Savinio, Pavel Florensky, and Henri Volohonsky, as well as two books of poetry and many essays and reviews. Larissa Volokhonsky was born in Leningrad. She has translated works by the prominent Orthodox theologians Alexander Schmemann and John Meyendorff into Russian.

Together, Pevear and Volokhonsky have translated works by Gogol, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Bulgakov They were twice awarded the PEN Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize, for their versions of Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" and of Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina". They are married and live in France.