Daniela Danz (1976) is a German poet and author. She studied art history and German language and literature, earning her doctorate with a thesis on the construction of church hospital buildings. Since 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 honors. 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). In 2023, she received the Thüringer Literaturpreis for her literary work and social commitment.

Ali Abdollahi (1968) ist an Iranian poet and translator living in exile in Berlin. He studied German language and literature at the Beheschti University in Tehran and wrote his diploma thesis on the use of concrete poetry in German classes. He has published seven volumes of poetry and several anthologies in Iran. In 2021, the publication of Wetterumschlag marked his first book of poems translated into German. The same year, he edited an anthology of Persian language poetry from the 21st century together with Kurt Scharf. Abdollahi has translated more than 90 works from German into Persian—including authors like Heinrich Heine, Friedrich Nietzsche, Franz Kafka, and Bertolt Brecht—thus making them accessible to an Iranian readership for the first time. He is a member of the Iranian Writers’ Association and has been the Iranian partner of the Haus für Poesie’s lyrikline.org since 2003. He has received honors from the Goethe-Institut, the Literary Colloquium Berlin, the Translator’s House Looren (Switzerland), and the Alfred Toepfer Foundation.

Takako Arai (1966) is a Japanese poet living in Yokohama. She is originally from Kiryū, a city in central Japan known for its textile production. Arai is a graduate from the literature department at the prestigious Keiō University. Her first book of poems, Haōbekki, was published in 1997. Her second collection, Tamashii Dance [Soul Dance], was published in 2007 and won the 41st Hideo Oguma Prize. Her latest volume, Factory Girls, was published in English in 2020. Influenced by her father’s small silk weaving business, many of her poems deal with the female textile workers who have been greatly affected by globalization, economic decline, and the 2011 Fukushima catastrophe. Her poems have been translated into Chinese, French, Italian, Serbian, and Turkish. She teaches Japanese language and culture to international students at the Saitama University. Since 1998, she has also edited Mi’Te, a journal of poetry and literary criticism.

Camille T. Dungy (1972) is an American poet, essayist, and professor. She studied at Stanford University and the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Dungy is the author of four poetry collections as well as several collections of essays, including Guidebook to Relative Strangers. Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History (2017), which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. One of the focuses of her work is the relationship between African American identity and nature. Dungy is the editor of Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (2009), which was the first anthology to collect nature poetry written exclusively by African American poets. In her 2023 collection of essays Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden, she weaves together themes of memory, motherhood, the environment, and culture based on her experience of growing a garden. Her numerous honors include the 2011 American Book Award, the 2021 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is a University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University, where she teaches creative writing.

Kendel Hippolyte (1952) is a Carribean poet from St. Lucia. He studied at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica and has since worked as a teacher, author, playwright, and director. He is known for writing in standard English, variants of Caribbean English, and in Kwéyòl, his vernacular. Hippolyte is the author of several books of poetry, including Birthright (1997), Night Vision (2005), Fault Lines (2012) and Wordplanting (2019). He also serves as an editor and is the author of several plays. In 1984, he founded the Lighthouse Theatre Company in St. Lucia with his wife, poet Jane King. In addition to his artistic work, Kendel is an activist and advocate for environmental justice. He played an integral role in the civic 1.5 to Stay Alive campaign and wrote lyrics for musical collaborations as part of the project. He is the recipient of the St. Lucia Medal of Merit (Gold) and won the 2013 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature in the category poetry for his collection Fault Lines.

Esther Kinsky (1956) is a German poet, writer, and translator. After completing Slavic Studies in Bonn, she surfaced as a literary translator from Polish, English, and Russian, and later as an author of poetry, prose, and essays. Now her work includes five novels and six volumes of poetry. In her most recent volume of poetry, Schiefern (2020), she devotes herself to the multifaceted sedimentary rock slate and the Slate Islands, a small archipelago off the west coast of Scotland, where the mining of slate dominated life for centuries. In general, the relationship between humans and nature plays a central role in her work, which always linguistically contemplates concepts such as »terrain« and »landscape«. Her work as a translator and author has been honored with a number of awards, including the Paul Celan Prize (2009), the Leipzig Book Fair Prize for her terrain novel Hain (2018), the German Prize for Nature Writing (2020), and the Kleist Prize (2022).

Nikola Madžirov (1973) is a North Macedonian poet, essayist, and translator. After completing his studies in Skopje, he was awarded the Studentski zbor prize for the best debut in 1999 for his first poetry volume, Locked in the City. Madžirov’s poetry is characterized by metaphorical language as it addresses the fractures and upheavals that his home country has been and continues to be exposed to. Madžirov has translated works by authors such as Louise Glück, Yehuda Amichai and Georgi Gospodinov into Macedonian, and is also active as an editor and cultural activist. Madžirov’s poems have been translated into more than 30 languages and have received numerous honors, including the Hubert Burda Poetry Award for Eastern European poetry (2007) and the most important North Macedonian poetry award, Miladinov Brothers (2007).

Maria Paz Guerrero (1982) is a Colombian poet and writer. Having completed her studies at the Universidad de los Andes and a master’s degree in comparative literature at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris, she is currently a doctoral candidate in literary theory at the Universidad de Zaragoza. Guerrero’s work reflects on the violence in Colombia in a way that is pointed and discerning. Her first book of poetry Dios también es una perra was published in 2018, and an English translation, God is a Bitch Too, followed in 2020. In this work, Guerrero creates an image of God as a needy, overweight, Latina woman. For her second work, Los analfabetas [The Illiterates], she collaborated with artist Alejandra Hernández and received the 2019 IDARTES grant for independent, emerging, and collaborative publishing projects. María Paz's third book, Lengua rosa afuera, gata ciega (2022) explores animality, song and sound. Her poems are featured in numerous anthologies, and a first selection of her works was translated into German in 2022 when she participated in the Latinale in Berlin.

Rou Reynolds is a British musician, author, and lead singer of the band Enter Shikari, for which he writes all the lyrics. Formed in St. Albans in 2003, Enter Shikari is now considered to be one of the most influential British rock bands of their generation. In his lyrics that are often critical of society, Reynolds tackles issues such as the exploitation of resources and climate change. Together with his band, he’s committed to political causes. His lyrics have been published in four books and each serves as a companion to Enter Shikari’s music, providing insight into Reynold’s writing via supplements and commentaries. In his most recent book, A Treatise on Possibility: Perspectives on Humanity Hereafter (2021), Reynolds uses lyrics from the album Nothing Is True & Everything Is Possible as the foundation for a personal analysis of global issues in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. In April 2023, A Kiss for the Whole World was released, the band’s seventh album to reach #1 on the UK album charts.

Liana Sakelliou (1956) is a Greek poet, translator, editor, and professor of American literature and creative writing at the University of Athens. She is considered to be one of the most distinguished representatives of the Greek literary scene. Sakelliou is the author of twenty books and works as a translator into Greek of authors such as Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson as well as protagonists of nature writing such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Gary Snyder. Her own poems have been translated from the Greek into ten languages and have been published in several anthologies and international journals. Liana Sakelliou is a member of the Greek Writers’ Association and was the chair of the European Union Prize for Literature in 2017 and 2018. Her book Όπου φυσά γλυκά η αύρα [Wherever the Sweet Breeze Blows] (2017) was a finalist for the Greek National Poetry Prize. In 2022, a collection of her poems was published in an English translation under the title Portrait Before Dark.

Raphael Urweider (1974) is a Swiss writer, translator, playwright, and musician. After studying German language and literature and philosophy at the University of Fribourg, he published his first volume of poetry, Lichter in Menlo Park (Lights in Menlo Park, 2000), which received many awards, including the Förderpreis des Bremer Literaturpreises in 2001. Three further volumes have been published since then. In addition to his poetry, Urweider also writes plays, and he was the co-director of the Schlachthaus Theater from 2008 to 2010. In addition, he translates from Swiss German, English, and French. Urweider repeatedly makes reference to nature in his poetry, and he devotes himself to hunting and botany in a lyrical manner that is highly sophisticated, as in his most recent volume of poetry, Wildern (2018). His poetry has won many awards, including the Leonce and Lena Prize in 1999, the 3sat Prize of the Ingeborg Bachmann Competition in 2002, the Clemens-Brentano-Preis in 2004, and the Schillerpreis in 2008.