(United Kingdom, 1964) focuses in her work on how horrors of war are remembered. Forna spent a part of her childhood in Sierra Leone where her father, a politician, was falsely accused of treason and hanged. These events were the subject of her memoir The Devil that Danced on the Water (2003). Before her debut as a writer, Aminatta Forna worked as a reporter and documentary filmmaker with the BBC, where she wrote and directed several notable documentaries about African history and culture. In her novel Ancestor Stones (2006) four elderly Sierra Leonian aunts tell stories of the past to their niece. And in the novel The Memory of Love (2010) a British psychologist in Freetown attempts to penetrate a collective silence about the past. In The Hired Man (2013) Forna brilliantly paints lingering tensions in one village in postwar Croatia. In Happiness (2018), a Ghanaian psychiatrist visiting London offers a view of Europe through African eyes.

(Syria, 1950) was a construction engineer before becoming a renowned writer in the Arab world. In addition to novels he writes popular tv series. His novel The Silence and the Roar (2004), this year appeared in a Dutch translation and is still of topical interest. Siries' great strength is that he succeeds in turning fear into humor. The international press compared him to Orwell, Kafka and Kundera. In his novel Siries describes the commemmoration of the twentieth year in power of a ruler. A cheering crowd blocks the streets. The writer Fathi Chin, a man in his thirties and an opponent of the regime, wants to visit his mother but is swept along by the frantic crowd. When a woman falls, he helps her and ends up in a hospital and in the tentacles of bureaucracy. He ends the day in the arms of the beautiful Lama - in a country where sensuality between two walls is the only freedom left.

(South Africa, 1974) is the son of the writer and poet Antjie Krog. He studied architecture at the University of Cape Town and has worked in Tel Aviv and New York. He writes poems in which architecture plays an important role. Both the design and the construction of buildings fascinate him in his debut Wanpraktyk (Bad Practice). Samuel looks at human beings with the eye of the architect. In short: we have to work at ourselves constantly in order to survive in a world full of cruelty. Samuel's debut was praised in South Africa and shortlisted for the Ingrid Jonker Booker Prize for best poetry debut. In addition to working as an architect he also writes and translates. Andries Samuel is divorced with his ex-wife and daughter living in Tel Aviv. The first part of his book of poetry is dedicated to missing his daughter, who is growing up elsewhere.

(Utrecht, 1955) is a translator of South African literature. He translated the works of Etienne van Heerden, Breyten Breytenbach and Antjie Krog. With Adriaan van Dis he compiled O wye en droewe land (Oh, wide and sad country), a collection of 101 poems in Afrikaans.

(Hengelo, NL 1962) is a radio journalist and a writer. His most recently published book is De Wadden (The Frisian islands; 2013), a poetic history of the Frisian islands. His book of short stories Brutus heeft honger (Brutus is hungry, 2011) was nominated for the AKO Literature Prize. Eating being the leitmotiv, Deen jumps through world history. The forty-four historical stories are fine miniatures of scarcely one and a half page long. After having studied Dutch in Groningen Deen worked for Radio Noord for some years. His radio columns from those days were collected in two publications. Since 2001 Deen has been programme maker with VPRO radio, hosting the historical radio programme OVT. A number of historical documentaries which he made for VPRO radio has been published as an audiobook. The radio series De lange weg naar Darwin (Long road to Darwin) appeared on cd and as a podcast. Deen was programme coordinator of the Winternachten Festival between 2009 and 2011.