Adam Fethi

Adam Fathi (real name: GASMI Fathi) is a Tunisian poet and translator born in 1957. He published several poetry collections including: Sept lunes pour la gardienne de la tour ('Seven moons for the tower keeper'), 1982 ; Chants pour la fleur de poussière ('Songs for the dust flower'), 1991 ; Le souffleur de verre aveugle ('The blind glassblower'), 2011.

Barbara Hoepli

Barbara Hoepli (Milan 1971) is a publisher and bookseller. She is chairman of the Board of Hoepli S.p.A - Casa Editrice Libraria (Publishers and Booksellers) in Milan, Italy. She is also a member of the board and of the executive committee of the Swiss Chamber, Milan, Italy; and member of the scientific committee of the Scuola per librai Umberto e Elisabetta Mauri. 

​Ludmila Şimanschi

Ludmila Şimanschi, PhD, is an associate professor. In 1999, she first graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Alecu Russo State University in Balti, before obtaining a Master in Romanian Philology and Languages at the same university in 2008. In 2014, she bacame Doctor in Philology after supporting her PhD research thesis on  “(Auto) irony and (parody) in The Levant by Mircea Cărtărescu”. Apart from her activities as a scientific researcher, she is a senior specialist in the Socio-Human Sciences Section of ASM, as well as the director of the Literary and Folklore Center of the “B.

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.

Sandeep Mahal

Sandeep Mahal is director of Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature. She is passionate about bringing books, words and ideas to the streets of Nottingham, so everyone, everywhere gets the chance to be creative with literature. Before arriving in Nottingham, Sandeep spent ten years working in public libraries and many years in the UK publishing environment, transforming cooperation between UK publishers and the UK public library network.

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.

Velizara Dobreva

Velizara Dobreva has thirty years of experience in publishing. She is executive director of Story House Egmont Bulgaria, a leading publishing house of children’s books, fiction, and non-fiction in Bulgaria. She is president of the Bulgarian Book Association since 2017.