2023

Ag Apolloni (Kosova, 1982) is an Albanian author. He studied Dramaturgy at the Faculty of Arts, and Literature at the Faculty of Philology, both at the University of Prishtina, where since 2008 he works as a Professor of Literature. In 2012, he earned his PhD in Literature. In 2013, he founded the cultural studies journal Symbol. He conducted interviews with Jonathan Culler, Linda Hutcheon, Mieke Bal, Stanley Fish, Peter Singer etc. His writings and works have been translated in several languages as English, German, Dutch, Czech. 

© Picture Burim Myftiu

Iida Rauma’s (born in 1984) debut novel ‘The Book of Disappearances’ was published in 2011 and nominated for the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize. Her 2015 novel ‘On Sex and Mathematics’ was nominated for the European Union Prize for Literature and won both the Kalevi Jäntti Prize and the Torch-Bearer Prize. Her third novel ‘Destruction – a Case Study’ won Finlandia Prize, the most prestigious literary award in Finland.

Ondřej Štindl (1966) is a film and music critic, writer, screenwriter and DJ. The film Pouta (Walking Too Fast), based on his script, premiered in 2010.

Ms Marit Kapla is a Swedish author and journalist. She was born in 1970 and grew up in the small village of Osebol in the mid-western parts of Sweden. She served as Artistic Director of Göteborg Film Festival 2007–2014, as Founder and Program Director of the festival’s digital streaming platform Draken Film 2014–2015 and during 2016–2020 she was one of two editors-in-chief of cultural journal Ord&Bild. She is a member of the board of PEN Sweden.

Sabina Jakubowska – PhD in humanities (Jagiellonian University), archaeologist, history teacher, mother. Her debut young adult fiction novel (Dom na Wschodniej) was awarded the Main Prize in the “Promotorzy Debiutów” writing contest organized by Tygodnik Powszechny weekly magazine and The Polish Book Institute.  
 

Anna Ospelt, born in 1987 in Vaduz, Liechtenstein. Studied sociology, media and education in Basel. She publishes poetry and short stories in literary magazines and anthologies.

Ilija Đurović was born in 1990 in Podgorica, Montenegro. Đurović writes prose, poetry, plays and movie scripts. His first book of prose, They Do It so Beautifully in Those Great Romantic Novels, came out 2014 in Yellow Turtle Press, a small Montenegrin publishing house he runs. This was followed by Black Fish (2016) and the poetry book Brink (2018), which received an award at a literature festival in Belgrade. Đurović has been living in Berlin since 2013 and living as a versatile freelance author and publicist.

Jeff Schinker, born in 1985 in Luxembourg, is a writer and journalist. He studied in Paris, where he obtained a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature. Since 2017 he’s been working as editor of the cultural pages of the Luxembourg daily newspaper Tageblatt. In 2015, Jeff Schinker published Retrouvailles, a novella about a protagonist who organises and simultaneously describes a meeting among old friends. While this task seems at first superficial and banal, eventually uncomfortable truths are revealed.

Tõnis Tootsen (born in Estonia in 1988) is a freelance writer who has primarily focused on translating, editing, design, and sound- and video editing. He has studied semiotics at Tartu University. Tootsen has published a collection of short stories, Nukumeister (The Puppet Master, 2012), and a monumental hand-written and illustrated novel, Esimene Päev (The First Day, 2016), the latter of which won the Cultural Endowment of Estonia’s Award for Literature in the free category.