(Tbilisi, 1983) had her breakthrough in 2014 with The Eight Life. In this award-winning, 1300-page family epic, the Hamburg-based Georgian writer tells the story of the fictitious Georgian Jasji family. She takes the reader to the Soviet Union, in particular during the dramatic years when Georgian-born tyrant Stalin was in power. She also takes the reader to the Swinging London of the 1960s and '70s, to the Prague Rebellion of 1968 and to the Caucasus, the area where she is from. Despite all the horrors she describes, it is not a terrible book but rather a tragicomic fairy tale with malicious traits. The main theme is the question of whether destiny still matters, even here and now in the West. Haratischwili made her debut in 2010 with Juja, followed by Mein sanfter Zwilling (My Gentle Twin) in 2011. She studied film directing in Tbilisi and theatre directing in Hamburg. Her plays have won many awards.

(Damascus, 1979) published Weg van Damascus (Away from Damascus, 2015), a Dutch language collection of his poems that was for weeks in the top ten of best-selling poetry volumes, followed in 2017 by Ik hier jij daar (Me Here You There), a collection he wrote with poet Anne Vegter. Almadhoun was born in a Palestinian refugee camp, the son of a Palestinian father and a Syrian mother. He studied Arabic literature and worked as a cultural journalist in Damascus, where he also set up a house of poetry. In 2008 he asked for political asylum in Sweden. Two poetry collections were published there, one of them written with Marie Silkeberg, with whom he also created poetry films. His poetry is imbued with feelings of homesickness and the guilt of a young intellectual who left his native country. His work has been translated into many European languages as well as Chinese.

(The Netherlands, 1975) is a writer of novels, poems, stories, essays, and screenplays. His work is characterized by the compelling way in which he brings characters involved in historical injustices to life. His debut novel Armin (2008) is about children adrift after World War II. In Ik was Amerika (I Was America, 2010), a Dutch prisoner of war in World War II befriends a farm worker in a camp in the US. Decades later, he seeks him out again. Peek received the BNG Literature Prize and the F. Bordewijk Prize for this work. Godin, held (Goddess, Hero, 2014) is a candid novel about the mysterious and all-too-human nature of love. In his pamphlet Verzet! Pleidooi voor communisme (Resistance! A Plea for Communism, 2015), he undermines decades of capitalist indoctrination. His novel A.D. (2021) tells about the events and hardships aboard one of the first seaships in the 16th century to present-day Indonesia and the arrival there. In 2025, his poetry collection Orang/oetan was published.

(Istanbul, 1987) studied philosophy at Princeton and is working towards his Ph.D. in Ottoman History and Arabic Philosophy and Theology at Harvard. He has published five books of poetry and five books of translations from the Iranian poets M. Azad and Fereydoon-e Moshiri and from the American poets C.K. Williams, Susan Howe and Lyn Hejinian in Turkish. Together with Sidney Wade, he prepared a selection from the œuvre of Turkish poet Melih Cevdet Anday. His poems, writings and translations in English have appeared in a wide range of journals, such as Guernica, Jacket, Five Points, and The American Reader, and in exhibitions including the 13th Istanbul Bienniale. He is currently working on the complete Turkish translation of Ezra Pound’s Cantos. He published Matter-Poetry Manifesto together with Cem Kurtuluş in 2004, and his new work combines paleography, Islamic manuscript tradition, found footage and soundscapes.

(1991) is a Flemish poet from Turnhout. After finishing her Language and Literature Studies at the University of Ghent, she explored word art at the Antwerp Conservatory. In the Poëziebordeel van Vonk en Zonen, Ondernemers in de letteren she performs as Lulu Wedekind. She toured with Saint Amour 2015. The same year, she was the closing act of the 33rd Night of the Poetry in Utrecht; in 2016, therefore, she opened the 34th Night of the Poetry. January 2015, her debut Kameleon was published by De Arbeiderspers. October 2016, she opened the Frankfurter Buchmesse together with Arnon Grunberg, as the youngest guest-country speaker ever. Her second poetry collection Nachtroer (2017) is nominated for the VSB Poëzieprijs (VSE Poetry Award) 2018.

(1967) is a Warsaw-born novelist, columnist and playwright living in Brussels. A graduate of Polish philology at Warsaw University, she is the author of best-selling novels Girls from Portofino and Illegal Liaisons, published in the UK, US and Canada. Plebanek is also the author of the novels Box of Stilettos, A Girl Called Przystupa and The Boxer as well as a collection of literary essays, Robbermaid’s Daughters. In 2017 she published her sixth novel, Miss Fury. Her books show the difficult truths about the integration between cultures. She writes a regular column in the Polish weekly Polityka, as well as in Poland’s daily Gazeta Wyborcza and in Trendy magazine. She was awarded the Zlote Sowy Literary Prize for her contributions to promoting Poland abroad.

(Romania, 1955) wants to connect people and ideas with her poetry and work. Her volume Chaosmos, translated into Dutch, is about a chaotic world that is highly ordered in a larger cosmic sense: thus, a chaosmos. Cârneci studied art history in Paris and is one of the leading members of the Romanian 1980s Generation. After the 1989 revolution that finished off Ceaușescu's communist reign, she became active in Romanian political and cultural life. She later moved to Paris, where she became Director of the Romanian Cultural Institute and a member of the European Cultural Parliament. Cârneci is chair of the Grupul pentru Dialog Social (GDS), a Romanian NGO that aims to protect democracy, human rights and civil rights. She is also the chair of PEN-Romania and editor-in-chief of Revista ARTA. Her work has been translated into French and English.

(India, 1995) is a poet and artist from Bangalore. In 2018 she graduated from Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia, USA, with a BA in Creative Writing. She was a 2018-2019 Thomas J. Watson Fellow, a 2018 Pushcart Prize nominee, and the winner of the 2018 Button Poetry Video Contest. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Virginia Quarterly Review, The Offing, Vinyl Poetry & Prose, The Academy of American Poets, The Shade Journal, DW B, and elsewhere. She is currently an MFA candidate in Poetry at Washington University in St. Louis, where she is poetry editor of The Spectacle Magazine. Sheriff was a guest of the 2018 Winternachten International Literature Festival The Hague.

(Ukraine, 1974) studied at the music academies in Poltava, Kiew and Enschede. In 1999 he released his first CD, Awakening featuring works by a.o. Vivaldi, Bach, Pachelbel and Piazolla. He specialized in Argentine tango on bayan and bandoneon at Codarts Rotterdam. As a soloist, he won the 2005 National Accordion Competition in The Netherlands with his rendition of Victor Vlasov's "Five Views of the Land of the Gulag Archipelago", also the title piece of his 2012 CD Gulag. He prefers genre-transcending projects in which visual art, literature and music enhance and flow into one another. He developed such projects with writer and visual artist Armando, sculptor and illustrator Koenraad Tinel, and with writers, journalists and filmmakers, including Stefan Hertmans, Cherry Duyns and Peter d'Hamecourt, among others. For his double-CD De sneeuwstorm (The Snowstorm, 2022), Lysenko arranged and played on bayan Georgi Sviridov's music to Alexander Pushkin's story of the same name, recited by Martinus Nijhoff Prize-winning Pushkin translator Hans Boland. With fundraising events and benefit performances, Oleg raises money to pay for an ambulance for the Ukrainian region of Poltava, where his family comes from.

(Kortrijk, Belgium, 1962) won the 2017 Woutertje Pieterse Prize for her picture book Stella. In it, a drowning person is fished out of the sea and taken in by a foster family. She has been teaching graphic design at the Hoger St.-Lucas Institute in Ghent since 1992. Dendooven is famous for and has won many awards for her children's book illustrations. She received the Gouden Penseel (Golden Brush) in 2000 for her work in De verliefde prins (The Prince in Love) by Ron Langenus. She also writes plays and children's books and illustrates adult books and newspaper columns.

(Belgium) took cello lessons at the Lemmens Institute in Leuven as of age 15. She earned her Bachelor degree at the Royal Conservatory Antwerp and her Master at the Royal Conservatory Brussels. She has taken master classes in the Netherlands, Poland, France, Spain, Belgium and Belarus. In the summer of 2012 she met the world-famous cello teacher Vladimir Perlin, with whom she is still studying. Since 2014, she has been a cellist with the chamber orchestra Young Belgian Strings, directed by Dirk Van de Moortel, and is also a member of the Etereo Ensemble. She is co-founder and cellist with the cello quartet BRUXELLO, with which she performs at home and abroad. She also regularly performs with the visual Artist Koenraad Tinel. Sturtewagen plays an instrument built in Brussels  in 1911 by Hilaire Darche.

(Belgium) received her Bachelor degree from the Maastricht Consesrvatory. After that, she took masterclasses in interpreting Bach, Haydn and Mozart. Currently she is finishing her Masters with Lenie van den Heuvel, Dorothee Mields, Peter Kooij and Pascal Bertin at the Royal Conservatory in Den Haag. De Baerdermaeker has a strong interest in Early Music and Baroque interpretations and has played solo concerts in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and France. In 2013 she set up the "Etereo" organization in Belgium, which organizes concerts and small festivals as well as school performances to bring classical music to young people. Besides Early Music, De Baerdemaeker is interested in contemporary compositions; in spring 2016, she was a soloist in the Dutch premiere of Harald Weiss' Requiem.