After studying Italian literature, philosophy and linguistics, with a specialization in literary translation - between the University of Lausanne and the Università La Sapienza in Rome – Festa Molliqaj received a second Master of arts in teaching foreign languages from HEP Lausanne.
Teaching foreign languages pushed her to develop didactic-pedagogical projects, allowing her to join the Swiss Association of Italian Teachers (ASPI) and publish articles in Swiss literary journals.
Bernard Gérard is Director of the Belgian Publishers' Association and of the French-speaking Publishers Union since 1985. He is also the General Director of Copiebel since 1999, as well as President of the Publishers Collegium since 2012.
Born on August 15th, 1955 in Sevilla, Antonio Maria Avila Álvarez studied Political Sciences, Law and Economics. He has been an associate teacher of Constitutional law until 1986, associate teacher of Foreign Trade (University Carlos III) from 1994 to 1996, and from 1997 teacher of the same matter in TPGA of the Autonomous University of Madrid. CECO's teacher, he gives classes to the Master of Foreign Trade and Trade policy in the University Carlos III, Santiago de Compostela, Alcalá de Henares and University Institute Carlos V of the Autonomous University of Madrid.
Born in 1965. He spent his childhood, boyhood and youth in the Niksic suburb of Straševina. He graduated from the Department of Serbo-Croatian Language and Literature at the Faculty of Philosophy in Niksic. He has been involved in journalism and literary criticism since 1995. He is the author of the books “Records” and “Conversations”. He is the editor of the Culture section of the Montenegrin daily Pobjeda. He works in Podgorica.
Aleksandar Bečanović, born in 1971, is a Montenegrin writer, film critic and screenwriter. He is the author of five poetry books, Ulysses’ Distance (1994), Being (1996), The Pantry (1998), Places in the Letter (2001) and Preludes and Fugues (2007); two short story collections, I am Waiting, What Will Happen Next (2005) and Obsession (2009); and three novels, Arcueil (2015), Disorder (2017) and Vlatka (2018). He has also published two books of film criticism, Genre in the Contemporary Cinema (2005) and the 900-page long Lexicon of Film Directors (2015).
Tanja Stupar Trifunović published five volumes of poetry, one volume of short stories and two novels. Her works were awarded and translated into English, German, French, Polish, Slovenian, Danish, Swedish, Macedonian, Czech, Hungarian, Bulgarian and Spanish language. Poetry book O čemu misle varvari dok doručkuju (“What are barbarians are thinking about while having breakfast“) was short-listed for the ProCredit Bank Literature Award for East and Southeast Europe and awarded with one-month stay in Vienna, Austria.
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.
Stavros Stavrou Karayanni is Associate Professor of English in the Department of Humanities of the European University of Cyprus. He is a critical theorist, performer, and creative writer.
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.
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.
