(Syria, 1970), journalist and writer of novels, short stories, scripts and non-fiction, is a great champion of human and above all women's rights in Syria. Yazbek fled her country after openly resisting the regime and lives in exile in Paris. She has won many awards, including the Oxfam Novib PEN Award during 2013's Winternachten Festival. The Crossing (2015), about her secret return during the war in Syria, was awarded Best Foreign Book in France. Her personal stories uniquely illustrate the situation in that country. In 19 Women: Tales of resilience from Syria (2018), Yazbek focuses on the role of women during the revolution. Her upcoming De Blauwe Pen (The Blue Pen) is a lively, poetic novel about a Syrian girl who cannot stop running through the middle of the insanity of the war.

(Tunesia, 1967) is a prominent internet activist who set the Jasmine revolution in his country in motion from the Netherlands. He fled the country in the late 1990s, settling in the Netherlands. In the northern, mostly agrarian province of Friesland he became a ship's master and began his own weblog. With other dissidents he founded the Tunesian webportal Nawaat.org in 2004, which played an important role in the ousting of president Ben Ali. When WikiLeaks late 2010 began leaking cables of American Embassies, Ben Gharbia, who knew Julian Assange from the international hackers' world, asked for the Tunis cables. Via Nawaat.org the 'Tunileaks' were translated into French and Arabic and disseminated. Ben Gharbia and Nawaat.org were awarded prizes by among others the Reporters without Borders, The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Index On Censorship. In 2012 he was recipient of the Prince Claus Prize and the magazine Foreign Policy placed him in the Top 100 of Global Thinkers. Sami Ben Gharbia lives in Tunesia again, contributing to a new identity for his country.

(Algeria, 1948) is regarded one of the most prominent literary voices of the Maghreb. After the destruction of his house in an earthquake, Flemish PEN granted him housing. Then he founded a PEN section in Algiers. Since then Mohamed Magani within PEN operates as a link between Africa and the Middle East. He is dedicated to fighting illiteracy, has published novels and essays and is a university lecturer in the social sciences. In 1983 his novel La Faille du Ciel won the Grand Prix Littéraire de la Ville d'Alger. Later he published among other books Le refuge des ruines, Une guerre se meurt, Scène de pêche en Algérie, La fenêtre rouge and two collections of short stories in English: An Icelandic dream and Please pardon our appearance. His work has been translated into German, English and Italian.

(Roermond, NL, 1965) studied Arabic and Middle East studies. Her second book was published in 2012: Het andere Arabische geluid (The Other Arab Voice), about voices of humanity and hope during the hectic transition period in the new Middle East. Her first book Dromen van een Arabische lente (Dreaming of an Arab Spring, 2008) was about the life and work of a human-rights diplomat in the Arab world. In both books she goes in search of the kind of stories that get little attention in Western media. Currently, Stienen is a publicist and independent consutant. She writes for NRC Handelsblad and De Volkskrant newspapers, has a column in the women's monthly magazine Opzij, and reguarly appears as a commentator on radio and television programmes and in debates at home and abroad.