(The Netherlands, 1959) has been writing about the expectations men and women have of each other and of life since her debut novel Bloem (Flower). Her novel Atoomgeheimen (Nuclear Secrets is about intimacy and the loss of ideals. She has been called the chronicler of contemporary womanhood; she explores her themes further in her novels De vertrouweling (The Confidant) and Zachte riten (Soft Rites). Pruis works at De Groene Amsterdammer weekly as a literary editor and columnist, writing essays on topics as diverse as humour, shyness and greed. She received the Jan Hanlo Prize for her collection of essays Kus me, straf me, and the J. Greshoff Prize for essayism with Genoeg nu over mij. For her columns, collected in Oplossingen (Solutions), she received the J. Heldring Prize. In Boos Meisje. Over vrouwen en frictie (Angry Girl. About Women and Friction), she writes about the split in which girls and women find themselves, including portraits of writers she admires such as Renate Rubinstein and Vivian Gornick. Her recently published confrontational novel Huiswerk (Homework) is about white privilege and the tension between employer and employee.

(1977, New York) made her debut in 2010 with The Possessed, a book about her favourite Russian writers, including Tolstoy, Pushkin, Dostoyevsky and Chekhov. In pursuit of literary truth, Batuman repeats Pushkin’s wanderings in the Caucasus, and travels to Tolstoy’s ancestral estate to investigate whether the great man might in fact have been murdered. The search leads to digressions on a wide range of subjects, from literary mores and translations to questions of love, songs by The Smiths, and the making of the film King Kong. By following the footsteps of her literary heroes, Batuman succeeds in bringing them to life and giving them a place in today’s world. Batuman,born in New York of Turkish parents, received a doctorate in comparative literature from Stanford University. She frequently writes for the New Yorker. Her essays are striking because of their fresh, comical, yet solid style. Her first book appeared in Dutch translation in 2010. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award (2007) and a Whiting Writers’ Award (2010).

(The Netherlands, 1962) is a Dutch writer, screenwriter and visual artist. She made her debut in 1995 with the collection of short stories Begeerte (Desire), which was nominated for the AKO Literature Prize, the Anton Wachter Prize and the ECI Prize. The title story was awarded the Rabobank Spring Prize for Literature. Her first novel Gemis (1997) was nominated for the Libris Literature Prize. Her most recent book, Vallen is als vliegen (Falling is Like Flying, 2019), was shortlisted for both the 2019 Bookspot Literature Prize and the 2020 Libris Literature Prize. The novel was named the best Dutch-language novel of 2019 by NRC Handelsblad and Humo. Uphoff was editor of the literary magazine De Revisor and board member and president of PEN Netherlands. As a screenwriter, she wrote the feature film screenplay Een Groot Geweld (Topkapi Films).