Alessia Rastelli

Alessia Rastelli (Civitanova Marche, Macerata - 1982) is a journalist for the "Corriere della Sera", where she is part of the editorial team of the Culture section and of the cultural supplement "la Lettura" (The Reading). She graduated from the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa after studying Modern and Contemporary Literature. She is the co-author of the web series "The noise of memory. Vera’s journey from the Shoah to desaparecidos", directed by Marco Bechis and turned into a movie.

Mariana Cocieru

Mariana Cocieru, PhD, is head of the Folklore Sector of the Institute of Romanian Philology „B. P.-Hasdeu”. She is especially interested in intangible cultural heritage, folklore, ethnography, ethnology, and literature. She published several books, including Ethnofolkloric constituents in the prose of Romanian writers from Bessarabia (1960–1980) (Chisinau, 2018, and coordinated several multimedia publications, including Voice archive: Interviews with personalities in the field of culture (in 20 volumes) (Chisinau, 2016, 2019).

Toby Lichtig

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.

Dimitar Atanasov

Born in 1973, he holds Master degrees in Marketing and Management as well as Law from the University of National and World Economy, Sofia. He has been selling books for more that 25 years and has experience in various forms of trade - direct sales, online - including 15 years as a sales manager at one of the largest bookshop chains in Bulgaria.Since 2012, he is a managing partner in Bookoholic Ltd, an import and wholesale company, trading with English, German, French, Spanish and Bulgarian books.

Carolina Schutti

Carolina Schutti is a writer. She was awarded the EUPL 2015 for Austria. Her books have been translated into eleven languages. Her most recently published works include: Eulen fliegen lautlos (Novelle, 2015) and Nervenfieber (Poems, 2018). She lives in Innsbruck.

José Jorge Letria

José Jorge Letria is a poet, writer, playwright and journalist born in Cascais in 1951. Awarded with numerous literary prizes, his works are translated in over a dozen languages, with both national and international awards. He is also a song writer and author of radio and television programs. He has a PhD in Communication Sciences and is President of the Portuguese Society of Authors.

Kari J. Spjeldnæs

Kari J. Spjeldnæs (53) has more than thirty years' working experience from Norwegian publishing, fifteen of them as Publishing Director in Aschehoug Publishing House. Spjeldnæs holds a Master of Literature from University of Oslo and has broad literary and leadership experience, from editorial and board work and in various committees for the Norwegian Publishers Association. She is currently involved in a project on digital development, writes a non-fiction book on reading and holds several board positions.