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Born in now modern-day Prague in 1883 to a large German-speaking family, Franz Kafka is widely accepted as the earliest "founder" of magical realism. His entirely German, classically-based, education granted him a degree in law. Kafka split his time between his work in several insurance companies, which he often referred to as his "bread job", and his extremely private literary passion. He was often debilitated by mental and physical health issues, usually due to stress. This was reflected in his literary work as he only published a select few of his works, leaving most of his manuscripts unfinished. His first publication, The Metamorphosis (1915), still finds itself at the core of magical realism today. The novel, like many of his other works, promotes the idea of breaking free from traditional society and reforming the world around you.

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Born into the family of a professor at Kyiv Theological Academy, Bulgakov studied medicine at The Medical School of Kyiv, graduating in 1916. He enlisted in the military during the Russian Civil War and ended his duty in Paris. There, he began to work as a journalist. Five years later, he moved to Moscow with his first wife, Tatianna. His first published work, The White Guard (1925), followed the story of a family in the wake of the Ukrainian War of Independence. It is assumed this novel is based on his personal experiences. Although his debut novel was moderately successful, he began writing his most extraordinary work of literature in 1928. The Master and Margarita is generally viewed as one of the greatest works of Russian literature of the 12th century. The novel was written using a combination of his experiences growing up in post-revolution Ukraine and as the son of a religious scholar. He burned the first version of the novel after one of his earlier works was banned for speaking against the Soviet Union. He continued to polish several other versions over the succeeding 15 years. He was forced to halt his work on his fourth edition in 1940, only weeks before his death. A heavily censored version (12% of text was removed) following his death. Its shocking depictions of Christianity and the Soviet Union led it to be banned by the USSR until the year 1967.

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Jorge Luis Borges was born into a middle-class family with a long history of military achievements. He quickly mastered English as his paternal grandmother was English. In 1914, his family moved to Switzerland until the end of WWI. Additionally, he picked German and French while living there. After the war, his family traveled around Spain, where he was introduced to groundbreaking literature. While in Madrid, he participated in the founding of Ultraism and published a literary journal, alongside some other young writers, called Ultra. He then returned to his original birthplace of Buenos Aires to be with his family. His first literary works included several volumes of books of poems, which he soon grew to despise as he claimed them to be "Too heavy on local color". This enhanced his interest in short stories, his most famous genre, as he published two collections of stories called The Garden of Forking Paths and Artifices. His radical writings drew the attention of the Argentine government which prompted him to tread lightly going forward. Luckily, soon after, his rising fame offered him a sort of "immunity" from the Perón Regime. He traveled around the U.S. and Europe writing short stories and giving lectures. He ultimately ended his journey in Geneva, where he lived out the final year of his life before he passed away in 1986.

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Born on St. Steph's Day in 1904, Alejo Carpentier's family had moved to Cuba only two years earlier in hopes of finding new opportunities in the newly independent country. His father was a French architect and his mother was of Russian descent. He spoke French at home but learned Spanish on the streets. His family was relatively well-off which meant an education of private schools for Carpentier. He began his advanced schooling at Colegio Mimó but later attended Candler College, a Cuban-North American school. He then attended the School of Architecture at the Universidad de La Habana but never completed his degree. He was forced to leave university when his father disappeared one day, never to be heard from again. He took up a job writing newspapers to help support his mother. Unfortunately, he was forced to flee to France due to his involvement in various 'Communist Activities'. There, he published his first work Praised Be God!, and worked as a journalist. He later returned to Cuba and served as a diplomat while continuing his writing career. He was particularly interested in the connection between European literature and Latin American culture. He included these via a conscious depiction of the colonial past in his novels The Kingdom of This World and Explosion in the Cathedral.

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Gabriel García Marquez was born on March 6th, 1927. He was raised by his grandparents and initially studied law in school. However, he abandoned his studies to pursue journalism abroad. He spent his career as a journalist in the 50s and 60s traveling between New York, Paris, and other international cities. He moved to Mexico City in the 1960s to devote himself to his creative writing. His first novel One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) is accepted as a staple of modern magical realism and arguably the most popular novel of its kind. His incredibly unique and sometimes controversial stories led him to become the first ever Colombian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. He passed away from pneumonia in 2014 at his home in Mexico City.

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Born Chloe Anthony Wofford, Morrison got her nickname from St. Anthony when she converted to Catholicism at a young age. She used her studies as an escape from her harsh childhood, growing up facing racial discrimination. Her hard work paid off in 1949 when she moved to Washington, D.C. to attend Howard University where she graduated with a bachelor's degree in English. She then went on to Cornell to earn her Masters of Arts in English. After her extended schooling, she went on to become a professor at Texas Southern and Howard University. She then took her talents to Random House Publishing to become an editor. She didn't publish her first novel, The Bluest Eye until she was 39 years old. Her succeeding novels made her a household name with several being nominated for, and winning several awards. She left publishing soon after the publishing of her third novel to focus full-time on writing. In 1987, she released her most successful novel, Beloved. This novel, based on the true story of an African-American enslaved woman, won countless awards and ultimately led to her becoming the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. A documentary of her life was released in June of 2019, two months before she passed away from complications of pneumonia.

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Originally born in Lima, Peru, Isabel Allende's father, a diplomat, abandoned her family when she was only two. She then moved with her mother and siblings to Santiago, Chile to live with her maternal grandmother. Her mother remarried another diplomat while in Chile. This forced Allende to move around a lot in her younger years. Her education largely consisted of an American private school in Bolivia and an English private school in Lebanon. As a young woman in Chile, Allende worked as a journalist for television and magazines. She was forced to escape from Chile to Venezuela when a coup took control of the country, making her family a target. It was here she wrote her debut novel, The House of the Spirits (1982), loosely based on her own experience in Chile during the coup. She described her departure from Chile as "liberating" and explained she probably wouldn't have pursued literature if she had stayed in Chile. She moved to the Bay Area in 1987 with her husband as she continued her literary career, writing books well into her older years.

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Salman Rushdie was born in 1947 in Mumbai, the same year as the India Independence Act, which essentially separated Indian Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs. He attended school in India and England, studying history at Cambridge University. Inspired by earlier founders of magical realism in Latin America and his own experiences growing up during a divide in India, he wrote his second book Midnight's Children in 1981. This faux autobiography greatly accelerated his career, winning him the Booker Prize. Rushdie's fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), created so much controversy that the supreme leader of Iran urged devote Muslims to kill Rushdie for his depiction of The Prophet Mohammed. As a result, he was placed under police protection in Britain for 9 years. To this day, his novel has produced two direct attempts on his life, one coming as recent as 2022, and one related killing of a Japanese translator.

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Haruki Murakami was originally born in Kyoto but spent most of his childhood growing up in Kobe. He moved to Tokyo to study drama at Waseda University. It was there where he met his wife who he opened a jazz bar which they ran together for seven years. He published his first novel Hear the Wind Sing in 1979 at the age of 30. It won the Gunzou Literary Prize for best fiction novel by a new author. The success of his first book led him to create two sequels to follow. He went on to write over a half-dozen fiction novels and even did a series of nonfiction works including interviews with survivors of The Hanshin Earthquake and the Tokyo Subway Gas Attack. The most notable of his works is the novel Norwegian Wood which explores the complications of human relationships.

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Born in Salamanca, Spain, Yann Martel traveled from place to place during his childhood as his father was a diplomat as well as an accomplished poet. He earned a degree in philosophy from Trent University in Ontario, Canada, his parent's home country. Yann stayed in Ontario following his graduation. He worked as a tree planter, security guard, and dishwasher until he took up writing full-time at age 27. He continued to travel extensively as an adult from Iran to Turkey and India but found himself enjoying Montreal above all. His first published work in 1993, The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, was a collection of short stories focusing mostly on human emotions. He was catapulted into the international light when he wrote his second novel (third book), The Life of Pi, in 2002. He was awarded the Man Booker Prize for his work and it was even adapted into a movie later. He continues to write to this day at his home in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.