(Cairo, 1957) is a writer, dentist, and one of the founders of the opposition movement Kefaya that helped launch the Egyptian Revolution. He had his international breakthrough with The Yacoubian Building, a novel about the lives of the inhabitants of an apartment block in Cairo. Although it paints a disconcerting picture of Egyptian society, it remained a bestseller in that country for years. It was also made into a film and a TV series. Al Aswani's writing style is quick and witty, with short chapters full of action, atmosphere and drama. His 2004 novella Friendly Fire, about a young man highly critical of corruption in Egypt, was banned. His newspaper columns about political developments in Egypt have been collected in On the state of Egypt. The Dutch translation of his latest novel will be presented at the 2015 Winternachten festival: De automobielclub (The Automobile Club of Egypt), about Cairo in the late 1940s, when Egypt was a British protectorate.

(Syria, 1930), the favourite poet of Rotterdam's Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb, is considered a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature. After studying philosophy in Damascus, he moved to Beirut and then Paris. His most famous volume, The Songs of Mihyar of Damascus, was published in 1961. His poems, essays, letters and interviews are often translated, especially into French. He broke with the formal structure of Arabic poetry and experimented with free verse and prose poems. In Arabic, Adonis wrote: "To write poetry in this language [...] means to unveil the invisible and reveal the abyss of absence that that distinguishes us from the unseen." In his work, he distances himself from Islam but holds up a mirror to the West, which fails to honour its thinkers and poets an thereby stands in the way of mutual understanding between East and West. His first anthology of work translated into Dutch, Wat blijft (What Remains), will come out during the festival.

(Morocco, 1961) is the Mayor of Rotterdam and a great lover of Arabic poetry. He grew up in Morocco's Rif Mountains and came to the Netherlands at age fifteen. Since the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004, Aboutaleb has become known as a politician who brings people together but also tells it like it is. Aboutaleb has translated the poetry of Adonis, and  recited several of these poems in Arabic and Dutch at Rotterdam's 2010 Poetry International. For History Month in October 2015 he penned the essay "Dream & Deed," about three Jewish families who remained hidden behind the organ of Rotterdam's Breeplein Church for almost three years during the war. According to Aboutaleb, this story of "Rotterdam's Anne Frank house" has clear links with the refugee crisis currently playing out across Europe.

(Morocco, 1973) is a journalist, columnist, translator, researcher and producer. She publishes in various media (including Dutch national daily newspaper NRC and women's magazine Linda); runs her own online magazine for culture lovers, Aicha Qandisha. She compiled a story collection about Arab women, Achter de sluier (Behind the Veil, 1999); 2013 saw the publication of her book Arabieren kijken (Looking at Arabs), about "ordinary" people in the Arab world. She made TV programs for various broadcasters, including the documentary series Seks en de Zonde (Sex and Sin). Together with Michelin-starred chef Soenil Bahadoer, she wrote the culinary books Spicy Chef (2020) and Streetfood (2022). She published two further books in 2022: Een koffer vol citroenen (A Suitcase Full of Lemons), a requiem for and portrait of her mother, and Arbeidsmigranten in Nederland (Migrant Labourers in the Netherlands).