(Karlsruhe, 1986) made a splash with her controversial debut novel Ellbogen (Elbow). The book won the Klaus Michael Kühne Prize. Aydemir, granddaughter of Turkish labourer immigrants, writes about a girl with Turkish antecedents who is so frustrated by the discrimination she encounters daily that, during a drunken spree, she pushes a student in front of the metro and then flees to Turkey. She feels no remorse. "Ellbogen is a punch in the gut. Or rather, two. One for the misogynistic Turkish community. And one for the hypocrisy of our oh so liberal society," wrote the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. Aydemir studied German and American Studies in Frankfurt. She writes for the newspaper taz about Turkish pop culture. She also set up the bilingual webportal taz.gazete as a reaction to the restriction of press freedom in Turkey.

(Amsterdam, NL, 1963) studied Dutch language and literature in Amsterdam. He writes reviews, interviews, columns and obituaries, and heads the books section of De Volkskrant newspaper. In 2011 he published Eindelijk Sneeuw (Snow at Last: twelve wintry stories about artists, writers, and books, from Willem Witsen's cityscapes to the tears of Mrs. Dickens). Exerpts from his reviews and interviews were published in the books Langzaam lopen is al verdacht (Walking Slowly is Suspicious, 1999), De ongeneeslijke lezer – een werkboek (The Incurable Reader: a workbook, 2002), Het woord is aan de schrijver (The Writer Has the Floor, 2005), and De Broodschrijver (The Hack, 2006), about Bart Chabot's biography of Herman Brood. In 2012 he published Kreten uit een urn (Cries from an Urn), a lecture on the role of the critic in our time. His text "Naar boven mit Brakman" ("Up With Brakman") accompanied the 2015 unveiling of the Brakman monument in Enschede.