(Emmen, NL, 1964) studied tropical agricultural engineering and was a correspondent for the Volkskrant and NRC Handelsblad newspapers in Belgrade and Moskow. He wrote about his time there in 1994's De Brug over de Tara (The Bridge over the River Tara). Together with journalist Bart Rijs he wrote 1997's  Srebrenica, Het zwartste scenario (Srebrenica, the Blackest Scenario). Ingenieurs van de ziel (Engineers of the Soul) was published in 2002, an inquiry into the foundations of the Soviet system and the role of writers. De Graanrepubliek (The Grain Republic), about the struggle between rich gentlemen farmers and communist workers in Groningen, was published earlier. Westerman's novel El Negro en ik (El Negro and Me), inspired by a preserved South African in a Spanish museum, was published in 2004 and won the Gouden Uil prize. His revised and augmented 2015 edition of De Slag om Srebrenica (The Battle for Srebrenica) won the Prinsjes Book Prize for best political book. Een woord een woord (One Word One Word) appeared in 2016, in which he tests the strength of free speech under the pressure of terrorist threats. As a child, he experienced the Molukkan train hijacking at close quarters; as a correspondent, he witnessed Chechen terror in Russia. Drawing on these gripping experiences, he describes a series of hostage dramas. In Zeven dieren bijten terug (Seven Animals Bite Back), Frank Westerman encounters seven magnificent creatures in the wake of Willem Barentsz. Along the way, the reader becomes captivated by the wondrous tale of seven polar animals and what they have to tell us at our latitude.

(Amsterdam, NL 1955) writes for daily newspapers and mgazines, particularly about art, literature, upbringing and education. In 2012 she published a book about these topics. In it she sketches the dilemmas of modern parenthood. In her weekly column for Volkskrant too Truijens writes a lot about upbringing and education. She made her debut in 2004 with Geen nacht zonder (Not a Night without), about a four-year old girl suffering from leukemia and the impact it has of the family. This novel was translated in German. Her second novel Vriendendienst (Friendly Turn; 2007) is about a bunch of schoolfriends taking stock together around their fiftieth birthday. They are all traumatised by the early suicide of one of their friends. In 2011 her biography about the writer F.B. Hotz appeared, about whom she had already published in the 1990s. In 1997 she published a biography of the renowned Dutch writer Hella Haasse.

(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).