(Morocco, 1975) is an award-winning writer, poet, playwright and curator. His 1996 debut, Bruiloft aan zee (Wedding By the Sea), was an immediate success. His second novel, De langverwachte (The Long-awaited) won him the prestigious 2003 Libris Literature Award. Benali's subjects vary, but sports and the migrant who never really feels at home are recurring themes. He has written novels about his great passion of running, about his travels, and about migrants' cultural identity (Bad Boy). His work has been published internationally. Recent books include the novel Paradijsvogel boven Hoge Woerd (Bird of Paradise over Hoge Woerd, 2022) and Het andere verhaal (The Other Story, 2022), an essay about his research into 75 years of modern Moroccan art.

(South Africa) os the stage name/nom de plume of rapper, writer, poet, actor and activist Simon Witbooi. He grew up impoverished in Capetown, where rap and hiphop became his outlet for the social inequality he saw all around. Although he began in English, Afrikaans quickly took over as his chosen langauge. HemelBesem (Heaven's Broom) calls himself an edutainer or educator because he wants to build bridges between communities and address African social issues. In his 2017 book God praat Afrikaans (God Speaks Afrikaans), he passionately defends the Afrikaans language. He is an ambassador for the Afrikaans Language and Culture Society (ATKV) and visits schools on a yearly basis in collaboration with the University of Stellenbosch for the Woorde Open Wêrelde (WOW) project. He is a descendant of Hendrik Witbooi, one of the greatest 19th-century resistance heroes during the genocide by the German colonizers in Southwestern Africa, now Namibia.