Rike Scheffler (1985) is a German poet, musician, and translator. She studied psychology and creative writing at the German Literature Institute in Leipzig. Published in 2014, her debut collection, der rest ist resonanz, was awarded the Orphil Debut Prize. Her most recent poetry collection, Lava. Rituale (2023), explores possibilities of cross-species alliances with more-than-human beings and artificial intelligence, creating a form of speech rooted in connection with nature. Rike Scheffler often develops polyphonic performances and immersive word and sound installations from her poems, which have been presented in Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie and Hamburger Bahnhof, as well as in Copenhagen’s Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, and Paris’ Palais de Tokyo. She is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including from the German Academy Villa Massimo as well as the Academy of Arts Berlin. Her poems have been widely translated, including into English, Italian, and Spanish.

Asmaa Azaizeh (1985) is a Palestinian poet, editor, and writer. After studying journalism and English literature at the University of Haifa, she worked as an editor at various Arabic newspapers and radio stations. In 2011, she made her poetic debut with the collection لِيوا [Liwa], which received the Abdul Mohsin Al Qattan Prize for emerging writers. Three further poetry collections followed, including لا تُصَدِّقوني إن حدَّثتُكُم عن الحرب [Don’t Believe Me If I Talk To You Of War], which was published in Arabic, Dutch, and Swedish in 2019. Azaizeh is the editor of the bilingual anthology Ein Stein, nicht umgewendet (2017), which features poems by Palestinian and German poets. In 2025, she emigrated to Europe as a result of the war.

Natalie Diaz (1978) is an Indigenous American poet and associate professor. She teaches contemporary poetry at Arizona State University in Phoenix. Diaz grew up on the Fort Mojave Indian Reservation in California and is active as a writer, scholar, poet, and political activist for the preservation of Indigenous languages. Published in 2013, her first poetry collection, When My Brother Was an Aztec, was nominated for the PEN/Open Book Award and won the American Book Award. For her second poetry collection, Postcolonial Love Poem (2020), Natalie Diaz won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Diaz’s work addresses the ongoing oppression of Indigenous communities and their habitats. She has received numerous awards for her work, including the MacArthur Fellowship (2018).

Alhierd Bacharevič is a Belarusian novelist, essayist, and translator. He is considered one of the most important literary voices in his country. After studying Belarusian literature and linguistics in Minsk, he published numerous novels and essay collections. His works available in German include Die Elster auf dem Galgen (2010) and Das letzte Buch von Herrn A. (2023). His 900-page novel, Europas Hunde (2024), has received multipe honors, including the 2025 Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding. In addition, Bacharevič works as a translator and has translated Hans Magnus Enzensberger and tales by Wilhelm Hauff into Belarusian. In 2020, he took part in the protests against Lukashenko’s dictatorship, which led to his works being banned in Belarus. As a result, Bacharevič was forced into exile and currently lives in Berlin.

Haytham El-Wardany (1972) is an Egyptian writer, essayist, and translator. Born in Cairo, he moved to Berlin in 1999 and has lived in both cities ever since. El-Wardany is the author of numerous works of prose, including the internationally acclaimed essay collection كيف تختفي, published in 2013 and translated into English as How to Disappear (2017). His collection of prose The Book of Sleep (2017), which was published in an English translation in 2020, was written in the wake of the Egyptian protest movements in the early 2010s. In short lyrical pieces, El-Wardany explores sleep in the context of political resistance. He is also a translator of Walter Benjamin, making his works accessible to Arabic readers for the first time. El-Wardany is the recipient of several awards, including the Cairo International Book Fair Prize (2012, 2020) and the Keith Haring Fellowship (2023).

Angélica Freitas (1973) is a Brazilian poet, translator, and editor. After completing her studies, she initially worked as a journalist in São Paolo. Her poetic debut was the collection Rilke Shake (2007), which was published in German in 2011. Three further poetry collections followed, including Um útero é do tamanho de um punho (2012), which was nominated for the Portugal Telecom Literature Prize in 2013. Under the title Der Uterus ist groß wie eine Faust, the book was published in German in 2020. Freitas’ poetry uses satire and irony to confront patriarchal violence and binary gender roles. In 2020, she was a fellow at the DAAD Artists in Berlin Program and in recent years, Freitas has collaborated with musician Juliana Perdigão in the staging of the musical poetry performances entitled »Canções de atormentar« [Tormenting Songs]. Her most recent poetry collection Mostra Monstra [Monster Show] was published in 2025.

Sarah Howe (1983) is British poet, author, editor, and lecturer born in Hong Kong. She won the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2015 for her first poetry collection Loop of Jade. This marked the first time in the history of the prize that a debut collection was awarded. Her most recent poetry collection Foretokens (2025) is also on the shortlist of the T.S. Eliot Prize and was selected by the Poetry Book Society. In addition to her writing, Howe teaches creative writing at King’s College London and the University of Liverpool. In 2014, she founded Prac Crit, an online magazine for poetry and critic. Sarah Howe is also a poetry editor at the British publishing house Chatto & Windus. Howe’s work has been recognized with numerous awards and fellowships, including the Hawthornden Foundation (2012) and the Radcliffe Institute (2015).

Sofia Jernberg (1983) is a Swedish-Ethiopian vocal artist, singer, and composer. The human voice lies at the heart of her practice. Using unconventional techniques and sounds, such as split tones, nonverbal vocalization, and distortion, Jernberg explores the possibilities of voice. Her musical work moves between jazz, improvisation, and new music. In addition to solo performances, she performs in chamber operas, as a soloist with symphony orchestras, and in jazz ensembles. Together with the pianist Alexander Hawkins, she released the album Musho in 2023, an album that interprets laments and songs from Ethiopia, Sweden, Armenia, and beyond. Her work has been presented at the Wiener Festwochen(2021), the KunstFestSpielen Herrenhausen (2022), the Festival d’Automne Paris (2022) and the Jazzfest Berlin (2025).

Ursula Krechel (1947) is a German writer, whose work spans poetry, novels, essays, radio plays, and theater. After publishing her first radio plays and essays, she made her debut as a poet in 1977 with the collection Nach Mainz! Since then, fifteen poetry collections have followed, including Verbeugungen vor der Luft (1999) and Beileibe und Zumute (2021). In 2012, she received the German Book Prize for her novel Landgericht. Feminism runs throughout her diverse body of work as do themes of flight, exile, and violence, particularly during the postwar period. Her most recent publications are the novel Sehr geehrte Frau Ministerin (2025) and the essay collection Vom Herzasthma des Exils (2025). Krechel has taught at several institutions, including the German Literature Institute in Leipzig and at the Berlin University of Arts. Her work has received numerous awards, among them the Joseph Breitbach Prize (2009) and the Jean Paul Prize (2019). In 2025, she received the Georg Büchner Prize.

Mélissa Laveaux (1985) is Haitian-Canadian musician, singer-songwriter, and guitarist. Since her debut album Camphor and Copper (2006), she has released four albums, including Radyo Siwèl (2018) and Mama Forgot Her Name Was Miracle (2022). Distinguished by Laveaux’s unmistakable voice, her music unites elements of folk, indie, and blues. Laveaux sings in English, French, and Haitian Kreyòl and has released her work on her own label Twanèt since 2018. Her poetic lyrics address Black feminism as well as queer and decolonial perspectives. Radyo Siwèl, for instance, reinterprets traditional Haitian songs of resistance from the period of U.S. occupation (1915–1934). Laveaux performs worldwide and has received numerous awards, including the Prix Lagardère (2008). In 2024, she was named Chevalière des Arts et des Lettres, one of France’s most prestigious artistic honors.

Joyelle McSweeney (1976) is a US-American poetry, author, lecturer, and publisher at Action Books. Her first poetry collection The Red Bird (2002) was followed by the essay collection The Necropastoral: Poetry, Media, Occults (2014) and the highly acclaimed poetry collection Toxicon and Arachne (2020), amongst others. Central to her work are themes of ruins, loss, and destruction in the face of ecological exploitation. Her most recent poetry collection is Death Styles (2024). McSweeney is a professor of English language and literature at the University of Notre Dame. She has received numerous awards for her work, including the Guggenheim Fellowship for Poetry (2022), and the Literature Award from the Academy of American Arts and Letters (2022). McSweeney is a guest at the conference »Anthropocene Necropoetics: Empire, Violence, and Ecological Ruin in US Poetry«, which will be held at the University of Cologne from January 28 to 30, 2026. She will make guest appearances at Poetica 11.

Mette Moestrup (1969) is a Danish writer, poet, translator, and critic. She studied Comparative Literature in Aarhus and was the co-editor of the literary magazine Den Blå Port. After her poetry debut Tatoveringer [Tattoos] (1998), she has published five further poetry collections and a novel. In 2017, her collection Stirb, Lüge, stirb was published in German. Mette Moestrup often works with multimedia and performance, also in her poetry. Some of her poems take the form of rituals or incantations. She also works as a translator and has translated writers such as Sylvia Plath and Sappho into Danish, amongst others. Her numerous awards include the Beatrice Prize (2018) and the Lifetime Honor Award of the Danish Arts Foundation (2019). Her most recent poetry collection is Butterfly Nebula (2025).

Daniela Seel (1974) is a German poet, translator, and publisher. Her first collection ich kann diese Stelle nicht wiederfinden was published in 2011. This was followed by the collections was weißt du schon von prärie (2015) and Auszug aus Eden (2019). Most recently, her highly acclaimed long poem Nach Eden was published in 2024. Seel’s poems explore existential themes, such as vulnerability and mortality, particularly in the context of social inequality and ecological destruction. She also works as a translator and has translated Robert Macfarlane into German, among others. Since 2003, she has published contemporary German-language poetry at the Berlin-based publishing house kookbooks, which she co-founded. Seel has received numerous awards for her publishing work and poetry, including the Mondsee Poetry Prize (2017), the Heimrad Bäcker Prize (2023), and most recently the 2025 the Kleist Prize.