(1958, China) was eight when the Cultural Revolution broke out. At age twelve she danced in the ballet of the People's Liberation Army and at twenty-one she was a war correspondent during the Chinese-Vietnamese war. In that time she began to write fiction. In 1989 she came to the US. In Holland Yan is known for the De laatste dochter van het geluk (Fortune's Last Daughter, 2002), set in the Chinese community of San Francisco around 1870, and Dertien meisjes van Nanjing (Thirteen Girls from Nanjing, 2012), which has the massacre of Nanjing in 1937 during the Chinese-Japanese war as a backdrop. In 2006 she wrote the English language novel The Banquet Bug (also: The Uninvited), a satire on corruption in modern China. Geling Yan adapted her stories for films by Joan Chen (Xiu Xiu, the Sent-Down Girl, 1998) and Zhang Yimou, who recently filmed her story about the massacre of Nanjing with the title The Flowers of War. Zhang Yimou is working on a new film based on her work: Return, starring Gong Li and Chen Daoming. Geling Yan lives in Berlin.

(The Hague, NL, 1951) is a sinologist, japanologist, journalist and writer. Asian culture, democracy, religion, politics, Islamic fundamentalism, and the aftermath of World War II are returning subjects in his vast body of work. His essays have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Guardian, NRC and The New York Review of Books. Buruma grew up in The Hague, the child of a British mother and a Dutch father. His book Their Promised Land: My grandparents in times of love and war tells the story of his London-born, German-Jewish grandparents. He has been a professor of democracy, human rights and journalism in New York since 2003. He received the Erasmus Prize in 2008.

(The Netherlands, 1970) is a presenter, producer, actor and voice-over artist specializing in music, literature, arts and culture. After graduating as actor from the Toneelschool Amsterdam he was a member, among others, of the ensemble of the Nationale Toneel. He was a presenter at Amsterdam-based broadcaster AT5 and a radio producer with the KRO on national network NPO Radio 1. He narrates audio books, and was shortlisted for the Storytel Award 2019 for Best Audio Book with his reading of Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer's novel Grand Hotel Europa. Until last year, he presented on radio station Sublime the daily morning show Sublime Sunrise, the Instagram poetry programme Sublime Smooth and evening show The Sublime Experience. In 2025 he wrote and hosted the tv-series Kringlopen met Francis on regional Dutch broadcaster NH. Broekhuijsen works for Writers Unlimited as festival curator and presenter.

Go to the website of Francis Broekhuijsen
Instagram: @francisbroekhuijsen