Elizabeta Bakovska (1969) received her BA and MA from the Faculty of Philology “Blaze Koneski” in Skopje, from the English Language and Literature Department. She holds Ph.D. in gender studies from Euro-Balkan Institute. She was the editor-in-chief of Blesok, an electronic magazine for culture and literature (www.blesok.mk). She translates, writes poetry and prose, as well as literary theory and criticism.
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.
Siri Odfjell Risdal (41) is Festival Director for Kapittel, Stavanger International Festival for Literature and Freedom of Speech at Sølvberget Library and Cultural Centre. Risdal is educated a librarian with a master’s in Literacy Studies, and has been a jury member for the Norwegian Ministry of Culture’s prizes for childrens literature, head of the jury for the Brage Prize for childrens literature and head of the Norwegian Cultural Council’s committee for comic books. From 2014 – 2019 Risdal was Project Manager for the Nordic Conference on childrens literature.
Lana Bastašić was born in Zagreb in 1986. She majored in English and holds a master’s degree in cultural studies. She has published two collections of short stories, one book of children’s stories and one of poetry. Catch the Rabbit, her first novel, was published in Belgrade in 2018 and reprinted in Sarajevo in 2019. It was shortlisted for the 2019 NIN award and was translated into Catalan and Spanish in 2020. Her short stories have been included in regional anthologies and magazines throughout the former Yugoslavia.
Mudlum (Made Luiga), born on 31 July 1966, is an Estonian prose writer and a literary reviewer. She studied philosophy at the Estonian Humanitarian Institute (Eesti Humanitaarinstituut) and graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts (Eesti Kunstiakadeemia), which provides higher education in art, design, architecture, media, art history and conservation/restoration.
Maša Kolanović (born in Zagreb, 1979) works as an associate professor in the Department of Croatian Studies at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb. She graduated from the same faculty with a degree in Croatian language and comparative literature and a PhD.
Matthias Nawrat was born in 1979 in Opole, Poland, and moved to Germany with his family at the age of 10. His first novel Wir zwei allein (The Two of Us Alone), published in 2012, was awarded the Literaturpreis of the Kanton of Bern 2012 and the Adelbert-von-ChamissoFörderpreis 2013. For an excerpt from his dystopian novel Unternehmer (Entrepreneurs), Nawrat was awarded the KELAG Prize at the Klagenfurt Days of German-Language Literature in 2012 and the Bayern2-Wortspiele-Preis 2014.
Petar Andonovski (born 1987, Kumanovo) is mainly a prose writer. He has a degree in general and comparative literature from the Faculty of Philology in Skopje and has been a writer in residence in Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Montenegro. Currently, he works for the Polica publishing house. His novel Телото во кое треба да се живее (The Body One Must Live In) received the 2015 National Novel of the Year Award. His other previous work includes Ментален простор (Mental Space, poetry collection, 2008) and Oчи со боја на чевли (Shoe-colored Eyes, novel, 2013).
Stefan Bošković was born in 1983 in Podgorica. His books include the short story collection Transparentne životinje (Transparent Animals, 2018) and the novel Šamaranje (Slap in the Face, 2014), awarded the 2014 prize for the best manuscript novel in Montenegro. In 2016, he won second prize at the Festival of European Short Stories for Fashion and Friends.
