(New York, 1969) is seen as one of the most ambitious, ground-breaking contemporary American writers. His latest novel, The Underground Railway, was chosen for Oprah Winfrey's 2016 Book Club Selection. Obama put it on his summer reading list. November 2016 Whitehead received the National Book Award, the most prestigious American literary prize, for his novel. The book is Whitehead's alternative history of slavery in America. Slave Cora flees via the Underground Railway (a clandestine network of anti-slavery activists) to the free north as a macabre Alice in Wonderland. The New York Times drew wrote that the book helps not only to understand America's past but also contemporary times. Whitehead debuted in 1999 with The Intuitionist, named the best novel of the year by Esquire magazine. Besides six novels, he has also written two non-fiction books, and regularly writes for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Granta and Harper's.

(Amsterdam, NL, 1963) studied Dutch language and literature in Amsterdam. He writes reviews, interviews, columns and obituaries, and heads the books section of De Volkskrant newspaper. In 2011 he published Eindelijk Sneeuw (Snow at Last: twelve wintry stories about artists, writers, and books, from Willem Witsen's cityscapes to the tears of Mrs. Dickens). Exerpts from his reviews and interviews were published in the books Langzaam lopen is al verdacht (Walking Slowly is Suspicious, 1999), De ongeneeslijke lezer – een werkboek (The Incurable Reader: a workbook, 2002), Het woord is aan de schrijver (The Writer Has the Floor, 2005), and De Broodschrijver (The Hack, 2006), about Bart Chabot's biography of Herman Brood. In 2012 he published Kreten uit een urn (Cries from an Urn), a lecture on the role of the critic in our time. His text "Naar boven mit Brakman" ("Up With Brakman") accompanied the 2015 unveiling of the Brakman monument in Enschede.