Born on October 4, 1976, in Valencia, Spain, Sara Sanchez is bookseller at the El Puerto bookstore in the Port of Sagunto, Valencia (www.libreriaelpuerto.com). She is also the Vice President of Cegal, the Spanish Confederation of Book Guilds.
Rebekka Lotman is an Estonian literary critic, editor, journalist and translator, and since 2014 the editor-in-chief of Tallinn University Publishing House.
Rachelle Deguara has been working in the book industry for the last three years building close relations with authors, promoting their work and contributing to the National Book Festival (Malta). Her work in the literacy field started when she had the role of public relations officer in the voluntary organisation Għaqda tal-Malti Universitá which is the university association that strives to promote emerging authors and make sure that the pioneers of Maltese literature are not forgotten.
Ana Geršak (1983) has been working as a literary critic and editor for a number of years. She is a contributor to various literary journals, newspapers, web portals and the national radio. She was on the organisational team for the international critics’ symposium coordinated by the Slovene Literary Critics’ Association. In 2011, she received the Stritar Award, which is presented annually by the Slovene Writers’ Association to the most promising literary critic.
Iris Meijer has been working as a bookseller at Linnaeus Boekhandel in Amsterdam since 2015. Apart from day-to-day sales in store, she is responsible for the selection and purchase of English titles and partially responsible for the selection and purchase of fiction and non-fiction titles. Apart from her work at Linnaeus, she co-organises the annual nationwide event De Week van het Korte Verhaal [The Week of the Short Story] and she also coordinates booksales at the Lowlands Festival.
Stephen Carrière is a French writer, publisher and translator. He joins the Anne Carrière publishing house in 2004 and has been his managing director since 2009. More: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Carri%C3%A8re
Conor Kostick is an award winning author and historian based in Dublin, Ireland. As the author of sixteen books, he has twice been the chairperson of the Irish Writers Union.
Ostap Slyvynsky is a poet, translator, essayist and literary critic. He has published five collections of poetry. He is a member of the expert commission on translation at the Ukrainian Book Institute. He was also the laureate of the Hubert Burda Prize for young Eastern European poets.
Petr A. Bilek (born 1962) is a professor of modern Czech literature and literary theory at the Charles University in Prague, and the chair of the Department of Cultural Studies at the University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice. He is the author of six books on literature and culture and co-author/editor of five other books. He wrote on modern Czech poetry, literary theory, and – in the last decade – mainly on contemporary Czech prose fiction.
Paata Shamugia is a contemporary Georgian poet born in 1983 in Georgia. Since 2018, he is a president of the Georgian Pen Center. In 2015, he became the first Georgian poet to get the most prestigious SABA literary prize twice.
