Spoken word artist Jeannine Valeriano and her team of (guest) musicians and drawing artists - together Spoken Beat Night - create cross-over concerts in which jazz, spoken word, world music, readings, live animation and funky beats merge. The two artists do live sketches, which are personal and imagistic interpretations of the text. Spoken Beat Night plays with language; the team, plus top musicians from the comopolitan world of improvised music, pull the writers' words into the world of sound. With Jeannine Valerio (vocals), Maarten Ornstein (bass clarinet, saxophone and electronics), guitarist Paul Pallesen, illustrator and animator Floor de Goede, drawing artist Hans van de Meulengraaf, cellist Jörg Brinkmann and – in Saturday Night Unlimited - as a guest Nizar Rohana on oud.

(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.

(The Netherlands, 1967) spent a great deal of his youth in the Antilles. He had his breakthrough in 2005 with his novel Joe Speedboat. According to the media, his 2009 novel Caesarion earnied him a place among "The Greatest Ten of Dutch Literature." Dit zijn de namen (These are the Names) appeared in 2013, about the rough journey of a group of refugees. Wieringa gave music and poetry performances and made television programs. His essays and columns appear in various newspapers and magazines. Recent publications are the short story collections Dit is mijn moeder (This is my mother, 2019), Totdat het voorbij is (Until it is over, 2019), the columns collection Gedachten over onze tijd (Thoughts on our times, 2020), the novel Nirwana (2023) and the war chronicle Konvooi (Convoy, 2024). For this last novel he travelled with a convoy to Ukraine, that he supports with his activities for the Protect Ukraine organisation.

is an icon of the British spoken-word scene, a beloved English poet and performer, a social and political activist, and a radio producer. In the early nineties she began publishing CDs and DVDs of her poetry readings and live performances; she continuously expands this series, such as with 2020's The Lockdown E.P. Her poems, essays and short stories have been included in dozens of anthologies. Since 2011 she has published the poetry collections Under the Pier and Fishing In The Aftermath - Poems 1994-2014, and the youth memoir Springfield Road. Pessimism is for Lightweights - 13 pieces of courage and resistance (2018) was inspired by protests and demonstrations about issues such as women's rights, justice, sexism, racism, immigration and identity. Her debut novel Mrs Death Misses Death was published in January 2021.

(Moscow, 1961) is one of the most prominent names in contemporary Russian literature. He is the author of widely acclaimed novels Pismovnik (Letter Book. 2010), Maidenhair (2005), Taking of Izmail (2000) and Larionov´s Memoirs (1994). Shishkin is admired as a refined stylist whose fiction engages Russian and European literary traditions and forges an equally expansive vision for the future of literature. Born in Moscow in 1961, Shishkin has worked as a teacher and journalist. His novels have earned him the three most prestigious Russian literary awards: the Russian Booker Prize in 2000, the National Bestseller Prize in 2005, and the Bolshaya Kniga (Big Book) Prize in 2006 and 2011. His works have been translated into thirty languages. In "My Russia" (to be released on April 23, 2024), translated from German by Jan Sietsma, he insightfully exposes the roots of Russia's long-standing problems and its relationship with the West. He passionately speculates about 'his Russia', where the portion of the population that stands for democratic values takes the lead.

(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.

Kirkuk, 1974) is an Iraqi-Dutch poet and writer. In 1999 he fled Iraqi Kurdistan because he refused to write propaganda poems for Saddam Hussein's regime. He now lives in Utrecht. He debuted in the Netherlands in 2006 with Op weg naar Ararat (En Route to Ararat), 29 poems about Kurdistan, war and fear, but also about mountains, winter and the desert. His second poetry volume, Lontananza (2009), focuses on his yearning for his native land and for a place in his new homeland. His two identities also feature prominently in his two following collections, Territorium (2011) and Licht onbekend (2013).

(Hoorn, 1968) is a journalist who started his career at local radio station Amsterdam FM; after that he became editor of De Digitale Stad, hosted AT5's newshow and talkshows. Then he returned to making radio: first at BNR Nieuwsradio and afterwards at VPRO's programme De Avonden which he presented every Monday and Friday. Since 2015 Van Kan is radio news show host at national public broadcaster NOS; he also can be heard as voice over during TV news shows. Spring 2016, he hosted literary TV programme Boeken. Next to this, Van Kan is active as editor of literary magazines. Until 2007 he was part of the editorial board of De Tweede Ronde. Afterwards he moved to literary magazine Tirade. Together with Wim Brands he is co-editor of Nederland. Een objectief zelfportret in 51 voorwerpen (The Netherlands. An objective autoportrait in 51 objects), a collection of texts about typically Dutch objects by the same number of writers.