Christian Filips (1981) is a German poet, music dramaturge, and director. He studied philosophy, literature, and musicology in Vienna and Berlin. He received the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation’s Rimbaud Prize for his first volume of poetry Schluck auf Stein (2001). From 2001 to 2003, he was the dramaturge of the dance theater at Darmstadt’s state theater. Since 2006, he has worked as a freelance author, program and archive manager of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin, and as a director. Since 2010, he has published rough books, a series for contemporary poetry, with Urs Engeler, where his volume Heiße Fusionen Zwei, Beta-Album. Gedichte und Analysen zur poetischen Ökonomie was published in 2018. Filips initiated the German-Arabic writing workshop WIESE / مرج (Wie es ist) in 2017 and also translates from English, Italian, and Dutch. His most recent publication is Im Traum die Auskunft sagt: Hier! Ausgewählte Gedichte 1996-2022, which was published by Engeler Verlag.

Daniela Danz (1976) is a German poet and author. She studied art history and German language and literature, earning her doctorate on the topic of church hospital buildings. Sine 2021, she is the vice president of the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literatures. Danz writes poetry, novels, essays, and children’s literature. Her poetry addresses current socio-political themes in light of historical materials and forms. In 2019, she wrote the libretto for Der Mordfall Halit Yozgat, an opera by Ben Frost, based on research on the NSU murders by Forensic Architecture. Daniela Danz’s works have received numerous awards. In 2018 she received the Art Prize of the Berlin Academy of Arts, and in 2019 she received the German Prize for Nature Writing. For Wildniß (2020), her most recent poetry collection, she received the Günter Kunert Literature Prize for Poetry (2021) as well as the Orphil Poetry Prize (2022).

Logan February (1999) is a non-binary Nigerian poet and songwriter. Raised in Ibadan, Nigeria, February is currently studying and teaching in Purdue University’s MFA program in Creative Writing. In addition to first publications in literary journals, February has published three chapbooks—How to Cook a Ghost (2017), Painted Blue with Saltwater (2018) und Garlands (2019)—and the poetry collection In the Nude (2019). February’s texts examine the reality of queer identity in Nigerian society. By doing such, February cleverly intertwines European discourses like psychoanalysis with voodoo concepts and practices prevalent in West Africa. In November 2020, Logan February participated as a scholar in the digital conference “Un_Masking Difference” at the LCB. In 2020, February was awarded The Future Awards Africa Prize for Literature.

Lionel Fogarty (1958) is an Indigenous Australian poet. He has been a political activist of Aboriginal Culture since the 1970s and mixes English with Aboriginal languages in his experimental and often surreal poetry. Since 1980, 14 volumes of his poetry have been published. A selection of which can be found in the collection Selected Poems 1980-2017, published in 2017. At the heart of his most recent collection Harvest Lingo (2022) are a series of texts that he composed while living in India. In these texts, Fogarty pursues his decades-long project of poetically subverting colonial language – even beyond that of Australia. Lionel Fogarty has received many awards. In 2012, he received the Scanlon Prize for Indigenous Poetry and the Kate Challis RAKA Award in 2015.

Kim de l’Horizon (1992) is a non-binary Swiss author, playwright and poet. De l’Horizon studied German, film and theatre studies in Zurich, literary writing in Biel and currently transdisciplinarity at the Zurich University of the Arts. In 2022, de l’Horizon was awarded the German Book Prize for their debut novel Blutbuch, making them the first non-binary person to receive the prize. In fluid linguistic styles and lyrical forms, de l’Horizon’s novel unfolds the search for identity of a non-binary character who explores family origins, concepts of the body and the violence of patriarchal grammars. Their acclaimed debut was preceded by poetry publications and plays, in the 2021/2022 season Kim de l’Horizon was the resident playwright at Bühnen Bern.

Kateryna Kalytko (1982) is a Ukrainian writer and translator. A writer of poetry and prose, eight collections of poetry have been published by her since 1999, most recently Орден мовчальниць [The Order of Silent Women] in 2021. Since the start of the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine, Kalytko has regularly stayed in contested regions, only leaving the country for her performances abroad, where she recites her poems that deal with the events of the war. She has received numerous awards, including the Joseph Conrad Literary Award in 2017, the BBC Ukraine Book of the Year in 2017, and the Crystal Vilenica Award in 2016. Kateryna Kalytko is a member of PEN Ukraine. She is also a translator of contemporary literature from Bosnia and Herzegovina, among others. For her translations, she has been awarded a prize from The Kryvbas Courier as well as the independent translator’s prize Metaphora.

Els Moors (1976) is a Belgian writer and poet who writes in Dutch. She studied English and German at Ghent University and published her first volume of poems Er hangt een hoge lucht boven ons in 2006, which won the Herman de Coninck Prize. In 2008, the novel Het verlangen naar een eiland followed and in 2010 a collection of stories. She received the J.C. Bloem Poetry Prize and the Prijs Letterkunde of the Province of West Flanders for her second book of poetry Liederen van een kapseizend paard (2013). In 2016, a first selection of her poems was published in the German translation by Christian Filips with the title Lieder vom Pferd. In addition to her work as a poet, Els Moors is also a lecturer in Creative Writing in Brussels, Antwerp, and Arnhem. From 2018 to 2020, she was Belgium’s Dichter des Vaderlands. In 2022, the novel Mijn nachten met Spinoza was published.

James Noël (1978) is a Haitian poet and novelist, who is considered one of the foremost lyrical voices in his country. Noël, who writes in French and Haitian Creole, has published numerous volumes of poetry and in anthologies, is an editor of the magazine IntranQu’îllités. His monumental work-in-progress La Migration des murs is a poetic and philosophical pamphlet against the building of walls, which are evidence of isolation all over the world. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the French Order of Arts and Letters in 2017, and he was a fellow at the Villa Medici in Rome. Together with his translator Rike Bolte, he received the International Literature Award – Haus der Kulturen der Welt in 2020 for the German translation of his debut novel Belle merveille (2017).

Patti Smith (1946) is a US-American poet, punk musician, and photographer. Raised in New Jersey, Smith moved to New York City in 1967, where she became active in the arts and made connections with the budding punk and new wave scenes. She published her first poems that were influenced by the Beat generation in the late 1960s. She soon combined her poetic work with musical components and started performing with musicians. In 1975, her debut album Horses was released, which became a cornerstone of the punk movement. In Smith’s memoir Just Kids (2010) that won the National Book Award, she depicts her relationship with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, where she speaks on his behalf and conveys a fascinating picture of underground culture in 1960s New York. Her most recent publications are at the Minetta Lane (2018), Year of the Monkey (2019) and A Book of Days (2022).

Sukirtharani (1972) is an Indian poet and educator. She belongs to the Dalit, a population group oppressed by the Indian caste system. In the six volumes of poetry she has published to date in the Tamil language, she uses stark images to denounce the caste system and the ubiquitous oppression of women that remain in effect to this day while exploring the immediate physical experience of her identity as a Dalit woman. She has received numerous awards for her political activism and her poetry, which has been included in university curricula. Awards include the Thevamagal Kavithoovi Award, the Puthumaipitthan Memorial Award, and the Women’s Achiever Award from the Pengal Munnani (Women’s Front). Her poems have been translated into English, Hindi, and German, amongst others. Currently, she is writing a novel about life as a Dalit.

Zheng Xiaoqiong (1980) is a Chinese poet who won the prestigious Liqun Literature Prize in 2007. Until then, she had worked as a migrant worker in a hardware factory in Dongguan in the Guangdong province, publishing only the occasional poem. In 2012, her first book of poems 女工记 [The Book of Women Workers] was published. In it, she portrays migrant women workers based on her own experience and numerous interviews. Since then, five more volumes have been published, her texts have been translated into German, English, French, Japanese, and Turkish, and Zheng Xiaoqiong has been a regular guest at international literary festivals. Her poetry conveys the everyday reality in the factories as well as the effects of global capitalism on nature.