Sheila O’Reilly has been in bookselling and publishing for over 30 years. Under her ownership and management, Dulwich Books was awarded the accolade of best bookshop in the UK and Ireland by peers. Sheila has been a Costa judge, a judge of the Independent Bookshop Book of the Year award, a judge International Bookshop of the Year Award LBF and sat on many industry panels. She is currently a mentor for Independent Bookshops in the UK & Ireland.

“I am bookseller out of passion; it was my dream as a little girl! An only child surrounded by books, I remember the very first I was given and still have it, as well as all the following and all the ones I bought in the meantime... That's a lot of them, believe me!

Đorđe Krajišnik is a literary critic and a journalist at the Oslobođenje daily newspaper and the Dani magazine. In October 2017, he worked as a resident for the Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel. His literary critiques and other texts have been published in magazines and on websites across the Yugosphere. His publications have been translated into English, German and Albanian. He reviewed and edited several books.

Endre Szkárosi (b. 1952, Budapest) is a writer, poet and performance artist. As full professor he teaches literature at the University ELTE (Budapest), heading there also a literary doctoral programme. He has been a frequently encountered writer and performer on both the Hungarian and the international art scene as well as a scholar interested in the history and the theoretical background of 20th century experimental poetry and intermedia art. He was and has been editor of important reviews (Mozgó Világ, Új Hölgyfutár, Magyar Műhely/Atelier Hongrois) and editor of a number of anthologies.

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.

Dr. Brigitte Schwens-Harrant, born 1967 in Wels, is head of the feature section of the weekly newspaper "Die Furche" in Vienna. She has written numerous publications on Austrian and international contemporary literature. She received Austrian State Prize for Literary Criticism in 2015.

Wojciech Nowicki (1968) is a writer, essayist and translator. In addition to his interest in literature, he is also a culinary critic for the Kraków edition of the daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza and the co-founder of the foundation Imago Mundi, whose goal is to promote photography. He currently lives in Kraków.

Clea Bautista is Sales manager at the Arnold Busck bookshop in Copenhagen. 

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.

Marianne Payot is a literary critic for the French newspaper L'Express.