(Belgium, 1969) is the stage name of Belgian singer Helmut Lotigiers, who debuted with the Gent opera at age five. Fourteen years later he became well known in the Dutch/Flemish sphere through his participation in the Soundmixshow. More than 13 million of his "classical lite" records have been sold. He sang duets with Andrea Bocelli, Montserrat Caballé, Eros Ramazzotti, Placido Domingo and Cliff Richard, among others. He also gained world fame with lite-classical versions of African, Latin American and Russian pop songs. He has reached the number-two spot on American Billboard. After some down time, he went in a whole new direction with 2013's Mijn hart & mijn lijf (My Body & Soul), an album of a dozen original numbers sung in Dutch. For a literary evening at the Brussels Bozar in 2015, he composed musical literary portraits. At this festival, he performs with poets and sets poetry to music.

(The Netherlands, 1960) is a literary critic, writer, curator, interviewer, debate leader and "ambassador between France and the Netherlands in the field of literature", as a French ambassador once said. She has been writing about literature for some 30 years, mainly for the NRC daily. She published books on French and European literature, on Hella S. Haasse and Cees Nooteboom. Her In de voetsporen van mijn grootvader (2021) is an autobiographical search for her literary genes. Before that, she published Met Parijse pen. Literaire omzwervingen (in collaboration with photographer Bart Koetsier, 2020), which takes readers to Paris for walks in the footsteps of famous Dutch and French writers. She was joint artistic curator of the Netherlands' Guest of Honour role at the 2024 Leipzig Book Fair with German journalist Bettina Baltschev.

Go to the website of Margot Dijkgraaf
Instagram: @margotdijkgraaf