Helén Foss

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.

Claude Conter

Claude D. Conter (born 1974) is a scientific collaborator (2004-2008), curator (2008-2012) and, since 2012, director of the National Literature Centre of Mersch. He studied German Literature and Mass Communication in Bamberg and Berlin. He was scientific collaborator for the German Literature Department of Bamberg. He completed his Phd in 2003. From 2004 to 2008 he worked as scientific collaborator for the same department in Munich. In 2017, he was guest lecturer at the University of Sewanee (TN, USA).

Tanja Stupar Trifunović

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

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.

Jean Back

Jean Back (1953) was born in Dudelange (Luxembourg). After finishing secondary education in Esch-sur-Alzette, he became a civil servant, first at the Ministry of Family, then at the Ministry of Culture. Between 1989 and 2016, he was in charge of the National Audiovisual Centre of Dudelange (CNA). In 2003, he turned to literature with Wollekestol, a tribute to his hometown and its steel industry. It was followed by several books, among them Amateur which won the EUPL Prize in 2010 and is translated in six languages.

Nenad Rizvanović

Nenad Rizvanović was born in Osijek in 1968. He completed his studies of Croatian language and literature at Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb and in 2019 completed his PhD at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zadar with the thesis “Poststructural Analysis of the Role of Reader”. He teaches courses on publishing at Faculty of Philosophy in Rijeka. He has been publishing literary criticism and prose since 1985.