is a succesful designer and entrepreneur who fled his home country of Somalia because of civil war at age nine, coming to the Netherlands with his brothers and sister. At a young age Munie discovered that he preferred to learn a creative trade. He went to fashion trade school, developing his talents and designing his first bags which he sold directly to his classmates. He set up his business Omar Munie Clothing while he was still studying. An award as MBO-student of the Year came with 5 years of free studio space in The Hague. Currently, his exclusive, handmade bags are popular worldwide. In his Omar Munie Flagship Store, located on the Noordeinde in The Hague, he sells bags, accessories and items produced in collaboration with other designers; in his sustainable studio 'Dream Factory', also located in The Hague, he offers people who have difficulty finding a job a new chance and in his book Leef je Droom (Live Your Dream) he motivates young people to finish their education.

(1973, Baghdad) was named "perhaps the greatest living writer of Arabic fiction" by The Guardian in 2010. Both his debut, The Madman of Freedom Square, as well the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize winner The Iraqi Christ comprise stories of war, migration and refugee trauma. Due to his taboo-busting writing style he has also been called the James Joyce of Arabic literature. For a long time his work was only available digitally and was immediately banned upon publication in Jordan. In 2004, Blasim landed in Finland after years of drifting around as a refugee; he'd ended up in difficulties in Saddam Hussein's Iraq after shooting the film The Wounded Camera in the Kurdish north of the country. His work has been or is being translated into 20 languages. In March 2016 his first play premiered in a Helsinki theatre. The first Dutch translation of his work, the collection Lijkententoonstelling will appear during the festival.

(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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