Aris Fioretos was born in Goteborg in 1960. He studied at the University of Stockholm and at Yale. Ph.D. in 1991; associate professor in 2001; full professor as of 2010. Since 1991, he has published essays and novels as well as translations of Friedrich Hölderlin, Vladimir Nabokov, Walter Serner and Jan Wagner, among others. He has received several prizes and honors, most recently the Novel Prize of Swedish Radio (2016), the Jeanette Schocken Prize of the city of Bremerhaven  (2017) and the Swedish Academy's Essay Prize (2018). His novels have been translated into over a dozen languages. The German edition of his latest novel, Mary appeared in 2016 to much acclaim. In 1997/1998 Fioretos was a guest of the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) in Berlin; in 2001, Fellow of the American Academy in Berlin and thereafter Fellow of  All Souls College, Oxford. Between 2004 and 2008, he served as counselor for culturual affairs at the Swedish embassy in Berlin. In 2011, he was elected member  of the German Academy for Language and Poetry in Darmstad; since then, he serves as one of its three vice presidents. Fioretos lives and works in Stockholm.

Mircea Cărtărescu (1956) is a Romanian poet as well as a writer of prose and essays. A philology graduate, he has worked as a high school teacher and lecturer of Romanian language and literature at the Bucharest University. His debut work, Faruri, vitrine, fotografii, a collection of poems, was awarded the 1980 Romanian Writer’s Guild Prize. In addition to his books of poetry Totul (1984), The Levant (1990) and Dragostea (1994) special mention should be given to the Orbitor Trilogy. The trilogy comprises Die Wissenden (2007), Der Körper (2011) and Die Flügel (2014) and won the 2015 Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding. Additional awards include the most recent Thomas Mann Prize (2018) and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature (2015). Primarily, Cărtărescu’s prose has been translated into English, the latest work being Beautiful Strangers (2016).

Oswald Egger (1963) is a South Tyrolean author. While studying literature in Vienna, he launched the magazine Der Prokurist (1989-1998) and initiated the Lana Culture Days (1986-1995). In the meantime he lives at the former rocket station in Hombroich bei Neuss, Germany, succeeding Thomas Kling. In 2013, he assumed the Thomas Kling Poetry Lectureship at the University of Bonn for two semesters. Egger writes lyric poetry and prose as well as composing word-music pieces with composers. His published lyrical works began in 1993 with the volume Die Erde der Rede, which was followed, among others, by Room of Rumor: Tunings (2001), Discreet Continuity (2008) and Die ganze Zeit (2010). Egger has received several awards and honors, including the Peter Huchel Prize (2007), the Oskar Pastior Prize (2010), the Karl Sczuka Prize (2010 and 2013) and the Georg Trakl Prize for Lyric (2017). His latest works are Harlekinsmäntel und andere Bewandtnisse (2017) and Val di Non (2017).

Christian Kracht (1966) is a Swiss writer. In addition to his editor’s position, he was India correspondent for Spiegel from the mid-1990s, traveling extensively throughout Asia. He also wrote articles for the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper and together with Eckhart Nickel, published the magazine Der Freund/The Friend.  His first novel, Faserland (1995) was followed by 1979 in 2001. Both novels received international recognition. Ensuing works are Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten/I’ll be here in Sunshine and Shadow (2008) and Imperium in 2012 for which he received the Wilhelm Raabe Literature Award. His most recent work, Die Toten/The Dead (2016) earned him the Swiss Book Prize. In 2018 Kracht held the Frankfurt Poetic Reading on the topic of Emigration. He lives in Los Angeles.

Mara Lee (1972), born in South Korea, is a Swedish author and translator. She studied literary sciences and teaches creative writing. Her debut novel, Kom, was published in 2000 and deals with the issues of power, sexuality and womanhood. Kom was followed by Hennes vård (2004), Ladies (2007), Salome (2011) and Future perfect (2014). She was awarded the 2011 Svenska Dagbladets Literature Prize for Salome. Aside from her volume of poetry, Schlittenspur durch den Sommer: Gedichte aus Schweden (2009), her debut novel Ladies appeared in German in 2011 under the title Die Makellosen. Lee has translated into Swedish two books by Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse and The Beauty of the Husband. Her latest work was published in 2018, bearing the title Kärleken och hatet.

Lebogang Mashile (1979) is a South African author, actress and performer. Born in the U.S.A., she moved to South Africa in the 1990s, where she studied law and international relations before turning her energies to art. In 2003, she co-founded the collective Feela Sistah. She gave her acting debut in 2004 with the film Hotel Ruanda, followed by numerous theater roles. The 2009 production Threads, combining poesy, music and dance, was a joint effort with Sylvia Glasser. Her writing debut was launched 2005 with the volume of poetry, In a Ribbon of Rhythm, for which she was granted the 2006 Noma Award, an annual award for African writers. Her second volume of poetry is titled Flying Above the Sky (2008). In 2010, Töchter von morgen, a book of poems was published in German.

Agi Mishol (1946) is an Isreali writer. The daughter of Holocaust survivors, her parents emigrated to Israel shortly after the war’s end. Agi Mishol studied Hebrew literary sciences at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a subject she taught from 1976 to 2001. Since 2001 she directs the Helicon School of Poetry in Tel Aviv where she also gives workshops in creative writing. She has published numerous books, including Plantation Notes (1987), Selected and New Poems (2003), Moment, (2005), House Call (2009) and Working Order (2011). For her literary contributions, Agi Mishol has received the Israeli Prime Minister Prize (1995), the Kugel Literary Award (2000), the Yehuda Amichai Prize (2002) and the Dolitsky Prize (2007). She has also received three honorary doctor’s degrees. Her works have been translated into many languages. Her latest creation, Domestic Angel, was released in 2015.

Marion Poschmann (1969) is a German writer and lyric poetess. She studied German studies, philosophy and Slavic studies in Bonn and Berlin. Between 1997 and 2003, she taught at the German-Polish elementary school project Spotkanie heißt Begegnung/Spotkanie means Encounter. Baden bei Gewitter (2002) was her first novel, which was followed by others, including Schwarzweißroman (2005) and Sun Position (2013). She has also published several volumes of poetry such as Grund zu Schafen (2004), Geistersehen (2010) and Geliehene Landschaften (2016). Marion Poschmann’s writings have been much-acclaimed, having won the Peter Huchel Prize (2011), the Ernst Meister Prize for Lyric Poetry (2011) and the Wilhelm Raabe Literature Prize (2013), to name but a few. Her latest work, Pine Islands (2017), has been nominated for the German Book Prize and won the 2018 Berlin Literature Prize as well as the Klopstock Prize for New Literature. As of 2017, Marion Poschmann is member of the German Academy for Language and Poetry.

Jo Shapcott (1953) is a British writer, publisher and editor. She studied at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford and at Harvard. She teaches creative writing at the Royal Holloway, University of London. She draws on unusual sources, such as pop culture and the sciences to name just two, to describe her topics and images. Her first work debuted in 1988 with the title  Electroplating the Baby, which was re-released in 2000 in an anthology with her two other books, Phrase Book (1992) and My Life Asleep (1998) under the title Her Book. Two further volumes were published, Tender Taxes (2002) and Of Mutability (2010), the latter receiving the 2010 Costa Book Award. Jo Shapcott has received a great many awards, among them the first prize in the National Poetry Competition (1985 and 1991) and the Cholmondeley Award (2006), not to mention the Queens’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2011. Her latest release, The Transformers (2011), is a collection of lectures she gave at her professorship in Newcastle.