(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

(Iraq, 1971) fled his country in 1998 after completing architecture studies, was given asylum in the Netherlands and settled there legally in 2007. Since then he has published poetry, novels and collections of his columns. He received the 2000 El Hizjra literature award and the 2011 Literature Prize of the European Union. In 2013 he published Liever niet, antwoordt de liefde (Maybe Not, Was Love's Reply), an anthology of refreshing love poetry. His novel Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg (Two Blankets, Three Sheets) tells of his experiences as an asylum seeker in the Netherlands. Al Galidi published the short story collection Duizend-en-een-nachtmerries (A Thousand and One Nightmares) in 2017 and a poem collection Neem de titel serieus (Take the title seriously) in 2018.