(Baku, 1984) emigrated at age 12 from Azerbaijan to Germany with her Jewish family. She studied in Göttingen and Leipzig and was a 2014 writer-in-residence in Amsterdam. Her first, partly autobiographical novel, 2012's Een Rus is iemand die van berken houdt (A Russian is Someone who Loves Birches) is primarily about migration, according to critics, while Grjasnowa herself also wanted to bring exclusion and racism to light. In the novel, an Azerbaijani flees to Germany because of the war. After the death of her boyfriend she goes to Israel, but doesn't fully feel at home anywhere. The writer experiences this herself: even though she has a German passport, she must always account for where she comes from. Her second novel, 2014's De juridische schimmigheden van een huwelijk (The Legal Shadiness of Marriage) is about an explosive love triangle between a dancer and her husband and another woman.

is a poet who fled from Afghanistan and owner of wine shop De Filosoof located in the Papestraat in The Hague, a place where wine, philosophy and poetry embrace. Badakshani currently prepares for his graduation on the subject of moral philosophy. He is an active member of political party VVD and various student organisations of the Amsterdam-based universities VU and UVA. He is chairman of Afghan young people's organisation Khorasan, member of the board at VON and has executed various projects of the Changemakers Programme regarding honour-related violence, LGBT emancipation and forced mariages. These activities do not only focus Afghans: he also worked with Iranians, Moroccans and Somali young people. Khorasan's activities do not only take place in The Netherlands, but also in Germany, UK, Belgium and France.

(Israel, 1972) is an Israeli writer from a Jewish-Iranian family. Besides being a successful novelist, she writes poetry, created a children's book, and works as a presenter and scriptwriter for TV. Her third novel Grensleven (Border Life), which came out in the Netherlands in 2016, caused great controversy in Israel. A commission wanted to place the award-winning book about the love affair of a Jewish woman and a Palestinian man on Israeli high-school reading lists. But the Israeli Ministry of education prevented it because they felt it would encourage intercultural marriage. One year later, it was put on the list after all and has since become a best-seller. Her first two novels have also been published in Dutch: 1995's Perzische bruiden (Persian Brides) and 1999's Onze bruiloften (Our Weddings).

(Romania, 1973) is a writer, poet and columnist. Her first collection of poetry was published in 1993, after which she devoted herself to prose. In 2005, she moved to The Hague with her Dutch husband André. There she decided to write in Dutch rather than Romanian. In her novels, she has successfully developed a personal and candid writing style. Her publications include Lief kind van mij (My Dear Child, 2012), De ziekte van Kortjakje (Kortjakje's Illness, 2013), Tascha. De roof uit de Kunsthal (Tascha: The Robbery at the Kunsthal, 2015), Al mijn vaders en Picasso's keerzijde (All My Fathers and Picasso's Other Side, 2019), and Liefdesverklaring aan de Nederlandse taal (Declaration of Love to the Dutch Language, 2021). After the loss of André, she wrote her latest novel Gewone Hollandse jongens (Ordinary Dutch Boys, 2025) about grief, physical desire and the search for stability in the company of others. Her articles and columns appear in Tirade, De Groene Amsterdammer and Den Haag Centraal, among others.

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grew up in an artistic family in Iran and learned early on to express herself in musical and artistic language. In Iran she studied classical Persian music, and in the Netherlands at the Art Academy and later Pabo. Her working method emphasizes creating space for creative and artistic communication between people and cultures. With much enthusiasm, she teaches Dutch to refugees at the Hamrah Institute in Rotterdam. In recent years she has organized various cultural and culinary festivals. As a curator she has worked on exhibitions by refugees. Her most recent exhibition about and with refugees, their art and way of thinking at SeedZ-Rotterdam was opened in 2016 by Mayor Ahmen Aboutaleb.