Helén Foss has worked nearly 30 years in bookselling. She started out as part time help in a small bookshop while taking flying lessons, but advanced and was responsible for books in general in a larger bookshop. After taking the bookselling trade school, she became manager in very large bookshop just outside of Oslo. The last 18 years, she has worked as CEO for the independent bookshops Fri Bokhandel SA. She is a board member in the Norwegian Bookseller Association and a board member at Bokbasen, a company for shared metadata for the Norwegian book industry.

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.

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.

Grzegorz Jankowicz Ph.D. (1978) is a literary critic, translator and philosopher specialized on literature. He is the programme director of the Conrad Festival, the cultural editor of the “Tygodnik Powszechny” weekly paper, and the director of several literary programmes of the Tygodnik Powszechny Foundation. He also works at the literary department office of Kraków Festival.

Annina Rabe is a literary critic for daily newspaper Expressen and the Swedish Public Radio, among others. She regularly lectures on contemporary Swedish literature, both in Sweden and abroad. 

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.

Εrasmia-Louisa Stavropoulou is Professor Emerita of Modern Greek Literature at the Faculty of Philology of NΚUA. She has been president of several committees for literarure and translation-related state awards.

Leanne Ellul lectures in Maltese language and literature at the Ġ.F Abela Junior College as part of the University of Malta. She writes both poetry and prose. In the past she has written for theatre and still writes both textbooks and readers for children. Ellul has also translated a number of works to Maltese. She is part of a number of entities that have the Maltese language and culture at heart, namely Inizjamed and HELA.  

José Manuel Bernardes Pereira Lello (1958) has worked as an administrator at Livraria Lello since 1983. He is also part of the Lello Editores publishing house, both of which are recognised institutions in Portugal and beyond. José Manuel also served as the President of the Portuguese Association of Publishers and Booksellers (APEL) between 1995 and 1998, and was a member of the board of Portugal for the country’s representation as guest of honour at Frankfurt Book fair in 1997.

Gjoko Zdraveski (1985) graduated at Blaže Koneski Faculty of Philology in Skopje and holds an MA from the same faculty. He worked as a Macedonian language lecturer at the Faculty of Philosophy in Nish for eight years. From 2014-2018, he organized Astal Projections literary evenings together with Ana Golejshka, every first Tuesday in the month at Menada café. Since 2015, he has been part of the Versopolis project.