João de Melo was born on the island of São Miguel (Azores, 1949), but came to study in Lisbon at the age of eleven, and it is in this city where he has lived since 1967. Mobilized for the colonial war, he was in Angola between 1971 and 1974, as a sergeant nurse. After graduating in Romance Philology from the Faculty of Letters, he practiced the teaching profession in secondary and higher education.
Hanna Nordenhök is a Swedish novelist, translator and literary critic, born in 1977. Her latest novel ”Caesaria” (2020) was shortlisted for the Swedish Radio’s Novel Prize and her work has been awarded literary prizes from The Swedish Academy, Swedish Writer’s Union, Albert Bonniers Publishing House, amongs others. She recently translated Mexican author Fernanda Melchor’s internationally acclaimed ”Hurricane Season”.
Makis Tsitas is a journalist and author of 24 books. His novel 'God Is My Witness' received the EUPL 2014 for Greece and has been translated into 8 languages.
Dr. Sorcha de Brún is a lecturer at the University of Limerick, where she teaches modern Irish prose, Irish-language film, drama and poetry. She has published essays, poems, stories and reviews and is currently working on a monograph about masculinities in contemporary Irish-language writing. She is an award-winning writer: having received the Foras na Gaeilge 1st prize at Listowel Writer's Week, the Máirtín Ó Cadhain Short Story award and several Oireachtas na Gaeilge prizes.
Aliona Grati, PhD,Sh is an associate professor and literary critic. She has a PhD in Philology. Her scientific research in the field of History, Criticism and Literary Theory, resulted in the publication of 10 monographs, several coordinated volumes and 200 articles. As a litery critic and journalist, she actively supports emerging publications in the field of literature. She is also a member of the Writers' Union of Moldoval and of the Writers' Union of Romania.
Elin Sennerö Kaunitz is a senior editor at Norstedts, Sweden's oldest publishing house, acquiring both fiction and nonfiction in Swedish and forgeign languages.She has worked in publishing for twenty years. Before joining Norstedts, she was a publisher at Atlantis and an editor at Albert Bonniers and at Ordfront. Among the authors she has worked with are: Lisa Taddeo, Caitlin Moran, Roxane Gay, Jonas Hassen Khemiri, Jan Kjaerstad, Stieg Larsson.
Ben Andoni was born in Tirana. He studied Geography and History. Since 1996, his main profession has been as a journalist. For 12 years, he was the manager of a National Cultural Supplement. He works regularly for columns concerned with national politics and Kosovar issues. He has translated more than 20 prominent authors from Slavic and English literature. He also published 5 books of his own, concerned with history, publicity and geographic issues, and is the co-authors of some reports of the Civil Society.
Anahit Avetisyan is a literary translator and conference interpreter. She holds a Master degree in translation from the Ecole de traduction et d’interpretation of the University of Geneva, and was also part of the Fellowship Programme in Paris organized by BIEF and French National Book Center (CNL) for foreign publishers, editors and rights managers.
Toby Lichtig is the Fiction and Politics Editor of the Times' Literary Supplement (TLS). He writes for a range of publications, including the TLS, Wall Street Journal, Telegraph, FT, Jewish Chronicle and New Humanist, and has appeared as a guest critic on various television and radio programmes. He also freelances as a documentary producer. He was chair of judges of last year's JQ/Wingate Prize.
Ludmila Şimanschi, PhD, is an associate professor. In 1999, she first graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Alecu Russo State University in Balti, before obtaining a Master in Romanian Philology and Languages at the same university in 2008. In 2014, she bacame Doctor in Philology after supporting her PhD research thesis on “(Auto) irony and (parody) in The Levant by Mircea Cărtărescu”. Apart from her activities as a scientific researcher, she is a senior specialist in the Socio-Human Sciences Section of ASM, as well as the director of the Literary and Folklore Center of the “B.
