Helga Ferdinandsdóttir

Helga Ferdinandsdóttir, born 1969, studied literature at the University of Iceland and the University of Liverpool and holds a Master in Editing and Publishing. She has extensive literary and leadership experience, including editorial and copy-writer work in various media and on numerous committees. She was Literary Adviser at the Icelandic Literature Center and has served as head of jury on several literary prizes, including the Icelandic Literary Prize and The Nordic Council Children and Young People’s Literature Prize (the Icelandic committee). 

Jozsef P. Korossi

Jozsef P. Korossi is a poet, writer, and publisher born in 1953. After working at several publishing houses (Móra, Holnap, Pesti Syalon, Palatinus, Noran) for thirty years, he is now the managing director and head of literary editions of the publishing house Noran Libro. He published a number of books and edited several important literary anthologies.

Shakeh Havan

In 2001, Shakeh established Artbridge, the first bookstore café and restaurant in Yerevan, Armenia. During the past 20 years, she managed to change the culture of bookselling in the country, by promoting Armenian books, exporting them to libraries and customers around the world, and participating in international book fairs with the same vision of promoting Armenian issues and literature. She has initiated the project “Exhibition and Sales” for rural area in Armenia with collaboration with publishers to promote new publications.

Aliona Grati

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.

Faruk Šehić

Faruk Šehić was born in 1970 in Bihac. Until the outbreak of war in 1992, Šehić studied Veterinary Medicine in Zagreb. However, at 22 he voluntarily joined the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in which he led a unit of 130 men as a lieutenant. After the war he studied literature and, since 1998, has created his own literary works. He is regarded as one of the most gifted young writers in the former Yugoslavia, a shining light of the so-called “knocked-over generation”.

Raja Ben Slama

Author of several books, including a thesis on love in the Arab-Islamic tradition, Raja Ben Slama is a professor at the University of Manouba and a psychoanalyst. She is director-general of the National Library of Tunisia since 2015. Her latest book, in French, is Gender Orders / Disorders : Cross-Readings on Violence and Love (Tunis, 2020).

Vladimír Opatrný

Vladimír Opatrný (born 1978) is a bookseller. He completed his studies at the Institute of Information Science and Librarianship in Prague in 2006. For several years he worked in university libraries as a specialist in electronic information resources. He started his business with an e-commerce focused on professional literature and opened a shop in the center of Jablonec nad Nisou in 2012. He organizes meetings in the bookstore focused not only on literature and he considers the store as a place in the city center where people meet, not only for buying books.