(Great Britain, 1974) grew up in Ghana. During his studies in Manchester he joined Commonword, a group of visible-minority writers who discuss one another's work. He writes prose, poetry, articles, and the occasional rap, and regularly performs at literary festivals. The Dutch translation of his first novel, Tail of the Blue Bird (De Blauwe Vogel), was published in 2010, a crime novel about a Ghanaian village where a hunk of flesh is found and the police must figure out what exactly it is. Gorgeous descriptions of Ghanaian nature alternate with sharp passages about Ghanaian police corruption. The book was nominated for the Commonwealth Prize. Recurring themes in Parkes' writing include power, cultural conflict, love, family, and the friction between capitalism and humanism. He performs at poetry festivals around the world and is a regular commentator on BBC radio. He has recorded two CDs of poems: Incredible Blues and Nocture of Phrase.  In 2011 he published The Parade, a children's book about the spider Anansi, under the pen name K.P. Kojo.

(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.

(1977) is an Islam specialist and a columnist with Trouw newspaper and Volzin magazine. She was raised by a Dutch mother and an Islamic, half-Indonesian father. Her father's uncle was Inayat Khan, the founder of Western Sufism. After her studies Youskine moved to Syria to experience "real Islam" and learned that women are not as oppressed there as the West likes to think. She was discredited in 2012 after stating in her Trouw column that she would "love to punch in the nose" anyone who might insult the Prophet Mohammed. At first Youskine aimed to improve the world via her pen, but has lost that illusion. She criticizes the debate about Islam in the Netherlands: "There is no more knowledge. If this continues, the Netherlands will become intellectually and spiritually vacant." Yet she remains committed to increasing knowledge about Islam in the Netherlands through her writing.