Monika Rinck (1969), German poet, prose writer, and essayist, is the curator of Poetica III. Her first collection of poetry, Verzückte Distanzen (Zu Klampen), appeared in 2004; it was followed by the volume of essays Ah, das Love-Ding (Kookbooks 2006) and the collection of poems Honigprotokolle (Kookbooks 2012), among others. Rinck translates from Hungarian (together with Orsolya Kalász), Slovene, and English. She also performs with Ann Cotten and Sabine Scho as the Rotten Kinck Schow. In 2013, she received the Peter Huchel Prize and, in 2015, she was awarded the Kleist Prize. Rinck has taught at the German Institute for Literature in Leipzig and the Department for Language Arts (Creative Writing) in Vienna. In 2015, she held the Lectureship in Poetics at Münster. She is a Member of the Berlin Academy of Arts and the German Academy for Language and Literature. Her most recent publication is the essay collection Risiko und Idiotie. Streitschriften (Kookbooks 2015).

Javier Bello is a Chilean poet, university lecturer, and editor. He studied Spanish Language and Literature at the University of Chile and, in 2011, he received his PhD from the University of Las Palmas. Since then, he has been working as a lecturer in the Department of Literary Studies at the University of Chile. Bello published his first collection of poetry, La noche venenosa (1987), at the age of fourteen; it was followed by La rosa del mundo (1994), Las jaulas (1998), letrero de albergue (2006), and Los Grandes Relatos (2015), among others. For his poetry, he has received numerous awards, including the Premio Gabriela Mistral (1994), the Premio Juan Ramón Jiménez (2006), and the Premio Pablo Neruda (2007). In 2008, Bello published a critical edition of Winétt de Rokha’s poetic works.

Michael Donhauser (1956) is an Austrian poet, novelist, and prose writer. He studied German and Romance Studies in Vienna, where he lives. In 1986, he made his debut with a collection of poetry, entitled Der Holunder (Droschl). Since then, Donhauser published poems, short stories, and the novel Livia oder Die Reise (Residenz Verlag 1996). He also translated Arthur Rimbaud and Francis Ponge from the French. In autumn 2008, he gave the Lectures on Poetics at the University of Zurich, later published under the title Nahe der Neige (Urs Engeler Editor 2009). Donhauser has received numerous poetry awards: In 2005, he was awarded the Georg Trakl Prize for Poetry and, in 2009, the Ernst Jandl Prize for Poetry. His most recent publication is a volume of prose poems, entitled Variationen in Prosa (Matthes & Seitz 2013).

Nurduran Duman (1974) is a Turkish poet, prose writer, and translator. She has a degree in naval and ocean engineering and lives in Istanbul. In 2005, she received the Cemal Süreya Poetry Award for her collection of poems, entitled Yenilgi Oyunu. In 2010, she published a volume of narrative prose, entitled İstanbul’la Bakışmak, Salacak. Her second collection of poetry, entitled Mi Bemol, was published in 2012 and, in 2016, a collection of her poems in English translation, entitled Semi Circle, was published. Duman worked as a theater actress and director and she conceived several literature features for radio and television. Her poems are translated into English, Finnish, Serbian, Bulgarian, and Slovakian. She currently is the editor of the literature section of the art magazine Artful Living and an active Member of the Turkish P.E.N. Club. In 2016, she was awarded the Cultural Exchange Fellowship by the Turkish Cultural Foundation.

Maricela Guerrero (1977) is a Mexican poet, performer, and publisher. She studied Hispanic and Latin-American literature at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Her poems are published in the anthologies Efectos Secundarios (2004) and Divino Tesoro (2008), and, in 2006, she published a collection of poems, entitled Desda las ramas una guacamaya. From 2008 to 2009 she held a fellowship at the Fondo Nacional para las Culturas y las Artes with the poetry project Kilimanjaro. She also contributed to the project Casas as part of a fellowship. In May 2016, Guerrero held a fellowship at Villa Sarkya, Finland.

Gila Lustiger (1963) is a German novelist, essayist, and journalist. She studied German and Comparative Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and has been living in Paris since 1987. In 1995, she made her debut with the novel Die Bestandsaufnahme (Aufbau­-Verlag). Her novel So sind wir (Berlin Verlag), published in 2005, was shortlisted for the German Book Prize. In 2015, her novel Die Schuld der anderen (Berlin Verlag) was published and well-received. The same year, she was awarded the Robert Gernhardt Prize and, in 2016, she received the Jakob Wassermann Literature Prize. Lustiger worked as a reader/editor for publishing houses in Tel Aviv and Paris. As a journalist, she worked in/for the German-speaking program at Radio France Internationale and for the ZDF. Her most recent publication is her essay Erschütterung. Über den Terror (Berlin Verlag 2016).

Angelika Meier (1968) is a German prose writer who lives in Berlin. She studied Political Science and Literary Studies and worked as a research associate at the Free University of Berlin. In 2008, she received her PhD with a work on Die monströse Kleinheit des Denkens: Derrida, Wittgenstein und die Aporie in Philosophie, Literatur und Lebenspraxis. Her first novel, entitled England (Diaphanes), was published the same year. It was followed, in 2012, by her well-received second novel Heimlich, heimlich mich vergiss (Diaphanes), which was longlisted for the 2012 German Book Prize. In 2015, she received the Stipend of the Berlin Senate and, in 2016, the Art Prize for Literature awarded by the Berlin Academy of Arts. Her most recent publication is her novel Osmo (Diaphanes 2016).

Zeruya Shalev (1959) is an Israeli novelist and literary editor. She studied Biblical Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and lives in Haifa. Her novel trilogy Love Life (Liebesleben, Berlin Verlag 2000), Husband and Wife (Mann und Frau, Berlin Verlag 2001) and Thera (Späte Familie, Berlin Verlag 2005) brought her international acclaim. For Love Life, she received the Golden Book Prize by the Israeli Publishers’ Association. In 2007, the novel was made into a movie by Maria Schrader. In 2012, she was awarded the WELT Literature Prize and, in 2014, the Prix Femina Étranger. Shalev is an active member of the political peace movement Women Wage Peace, which fights for the involvement of more women in the peace negotiations in Israel. Her most recent publication is her novel Pain (Schmerz, Berlin Verlag 2015).

Eleni Sikelianos (1965) is an American poet, translator, and lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Denver. She made her debut in 1993 with a collection of poetry, entitled To Speak While Dreaming; it was followed by The Book of Tendons (1997) and The California Poem (2004), among others. Sikelianos received many awards for her poetry, including two Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative American Writing (1995/1997), the James D. Phelan Award (1999), and the New York Council for the Arts Translation Grant (2000). In 2001, she had a residency at Princeton University as a Seeger Fellow and, in 2015/16, she received the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her most recent publication is the essay You Animal Machine (The Golden Greek) (2014).

Galsan Tschinag (1944) is a Mongolian writer, translator, and shaman. In the 1960s, he studied in Leipzig before returning home to work as a lecturer in German language and literature. He is the head of the Turkic-speaking tribe of Tuvans, for which he is also active in securing humanitarian aid. His oeuvre consists of novels, short prose, and poetry, such as Gold und Staub (Unionsverlag 2012), Das Menschenwild (Insel 2008), and Liebesgedichte (Insel 2006). Tschinag received numerous awards, including the Heimito von Doderer Prize (2001), the Literature Prize of the Cultural Foundation of the German Economy (2008), and the TREBBIA European Award for his creative activities (2009). He is a Member of the German P.E.N. Center. In December 2002, he received the Federal Cross of Merit for his efforts in fostering dialogue between cultures. His most recent publication is his novel Der Mann, die Frau, das Schaf, das Kind (Unionsverlag 2013).

Stefan Weidner (1967) is a German writer, translator, and literary critic. He studied Islamic Studies, German Studies, and Philosophy. Since 2001, he has been working as the editor in chief at the cultural magazine Figrun wa Fann/Art & Thought, published biannually by the Goethe Institute in Arabic, English, and Persian. His numerous translations of Arabic poetry include collections of poems by Mahmoud Darwish, Adonis, and Fuad Rifka. His literary-journalistic work engages in current public debates on the relation between the Arab World and Germany. For his essay Mohammedanische Versuchungen (Suhrkamp 2006), Weidner was awarded the Clemens Brentano Prize of the City of Heidelberg (2006). In 2007, he received the Johann Heinrich Voß Prize in Translation from the German Academy for Language and Literature. His most recent publications are his polemical essay Anti-Pegida (CreateSpace 2015) and his translation of Ibn Arabi’s poetic magnum opus, entitled Der Übersetzer der Sehnsüchte (Jung und Jung 2016).

Lorenz Wilkens (1943) is a German scholar of Religious Studies. From 1994 to 2008, he taught in the Department of Religious Studies at the Free University of Berlin and, from 1982 to 1988, in the Department of Catechetical Services at the Evangelical Church Berlin-Brandenburg. Wilkens also worked as a parson and religion teacher and as a research associate at the Berlin Institute for Cultural Analysis. His research interests include the development and situation of the early Church, figures of mediation in religions, post-Freudian psychoanalysis, and the problem of Christianity anti-Judaism. His most recent publications are »Deine Treue hat dich geheilt«. Studien über die Heilungsmacht Jesu und die apokalyptische Erwartung im Markusevangelium (Peter Lang 2011) and Von unendlicher Huld und Treue: Studien zur Theologie des Bundes (Peter Lang 2014).