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 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 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 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.

Εrasmia-Louisa Stavropoulou is Professor Emerita of Modern Greek Literature at the Faculty of Philology of NΚUA. She has been president of several committees for literarure and translation-related state awards.

Dr. Brigitte Schwens-Harrant, born 1967 in Wels, is head of the feature section of the weekly newspaper "Die Furche" in Vienna. She has written numerous publications on Austrian and international contemporary literature. She received Austrian State Prize for Literary Criticism in 2015.

Armen Ohanyan (b.1979; pen name Armen of Armenia) is a fiction writer, essayist and literary translator. He holds a BA in philosophy from Yerevan State University and the graduate certificate in Translation (CTRA) from American University of Armenia. He’s the author of the story collection [The Return of Kikos], and the trilogy of novels [Mommyland], where for the first time in Armenian literature LGBT people are presented under a positive light. He’s the president of Armenian PEN Center (since 2017), board member of TIAC and Human Rights House Yerevan.

Lena is a German fiction writer and narrative designer for computer games. She's also the national chairperson of the Association of German Authors (Verband deutscher Schriftstellerinnen und Schriftsteller (VS in ver.di)) and co-founder of Phantastik-Autoren-Netzwerk (PAN) e.V. She was a member of the PAN board for 4 years and in this capacity, she co-founded the Netzwerk Autorenrechte (Network Author’s Rights) in 2016 with, among others, Nina George and Eva Leipprand. The Network joins nine (now 13) authors' associations for political purposes.

Leanne Ellul lectures in Maltese language and literature at the Ġ.F Abela Junior College as part of the University of Malta. She writes both poetry and prose. In the past she has written for theatre and still writes both textbooks and readers for children. Ellul has also translated a number of works to Maltese. She is part of a number of entities that have the Maltese language and culture at heart, namely Inizjamed and HELA.  

Bernadetta Darska (1978) is a literary critic and assistant professor at the Faculty of Journalism and Social Communication of the University of Warmia and Mazury. She also lectures at Master Writers’ School of Collegium Civitas in Warsaw. Between 2002 and 2009, she was the editor-in-chief of “Portret”, a literary and cultural magazine. She has written nine books.