was born in Vámospércs, Hungary. She spent the first 10 years of her life on a small, remote farm and currently works as a literature teacher in a high school. She has been writing for 15 years and appeared on the scene 10 years ago when she won a top place in a short story competition run by Élet és Irodalom (Life and Literature). Since then she has had work published regularly in literary journals and anthologies. Her pieces are typically short prose, although her first novel is about to be published and a film is in production based on her short stories for which she has wrote the screenplay. Her most recent work is Méz és szurok (Honey and Tar – short stories, 2005). Margit Halász lives in Budapest.
was born in 1958 in Prague and has worked as teacher, warehouse and petrol pump worker, journalist and theatre technician. He has published poetry collections Strašná záře (Terrible Radiance, 1991) and Bytost (A Being, 1994) and a collection of poems and prose texts Hluk (Noise, 1997). His latest collection Koncová světla (Rear Lights) was published in 2004.
was born in Salfeet West bank in 1977. He studied painting and graduated from the Fine Art College at Al Najah University. He is now an art teacher at Salfeet Secondary Boys School and works in many fields of art: panting, installation art, sculpture and public art. Since 2001 he has been a member of the Palestinian Fine Art Association and has participated in numerous art workshops and voluntary projects in the West Bank.
was born in 1972 in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon. He has published several poetical works and two novels: Valentine's Day, followed by Al Saada or Silsilat Infijarat Hazat Al Asima ('Happiness or A Series of Explosions Rocked the Capital'). He translates both poetry and prose and has contributed as well to many Arabic cultural supplements. Since 2004 he has lived and worked in United Arab Emirates.
was born in 1981 in Armenia. Initially she studied computer science at the State Engineering University of Armenia, and in 2005 she participated in World Press Photo seminars. Currently she is studying at the Danish School of Media and Journalism in Copenhagen. In 2002, the Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art published her first book of poems. In 2005, her second book Taboo was published, winning the Young Writer Award of the Writers Union of Armenia. Her poems have been published in Inknagir, Bnagir, Actual Art, Garunand Gretert magazines. Alongside writing she is engaged in photography. Her photos have been published by National Geographic Traveler, Eurasianet.org, Armenianow.com, Zaman, Ogoniok,and Newsweek. In 2006, she won the President's Prize in Armenia, as well as prizes for Eurasia Social Portrait 2007, Black Sea and Caucasus 2008, Europe and Asia 2009. See Anahit's blog here.
(Zurich, 1959) is a poet writing in French. He has published three poetry books: Ne retournez pas la pierre (1996), La pour me souvenir / Qui per ricordare (2005) et En deça de la lumiere (2009). He is also translator from French into German. He edited an anthology Passagen – Erzählungen aus der französischen Schweiz 1970-1990.
(1964). After her Masters in applied linguistics (Tilburg University) and Turkish studies (Utrecht University) she worked as a lecturer at the Department of Dutch Language and Literature at Ankara University (1994-1998). Since 2000 she has been working as an interpreter and literary translator Turkish-Dutch. She translated Turkish novels and short stories of among others Orhan Pamuk, Elif Shafak, Halid Ziya Uşaklıgil, Ahmet Altan, Oğuz Atay, some of them in collaboration with Margreet Dorleijn, with whom she also prepared an anthology of Turkish short stories. Van der Heijden was editor of a Dutch magazine on Turkish literature Umut and publishes articles on Turkish literature and translation in literary magazines.
was born in Hradec Králové in the Czech Republic in 1930. A poet, essayist and translator from English and German, he worked as publishing editor and second-hand bookseller and after he joined the Charter 77 movement he worked as janitor until the Velvet Revolution in 1989. After 1990 he taught medical ethics at Charles University. His first volume of poetry, Všechna slast (All the Pleasure) was published in Prague in 1964, but all his subsequent work had to come out in samizdat editions and was republished in the 1990s. His collected poems came out in 1996. A selection of his poems in English translation was published by Southword Editions under the title A Stay in the Sanatorium, in translation by Bernard O’Donoghue with Šimon Daníček. He has translated the work of Emily Dickinson, Georg Trakl and Gottfried Benn. 14. 11.
(Vitoria-Gasteiz, 1958) studied psychology and teaching in Salamanca and Basque Philology in Vitoria-Gasteiz. At present he teaches in secondary education. For his first book of poems, Hari Hauskorrak (Fragile threads, 1993), Arregi was awarded the Spanish´s Critics Prize. Some years later, in 1998, he was awarded the same prize for Kartografia (Cartography) which has been translated into Spanish by Gerardo Markuleta (cf., Cartografía, Bassarai, 2000). An anthology of his selected poems has been published by Susa. His work can also be found in various anthologies of Basque poetry published in Spanish, German and Galician. Various poems have appeared in Basque, Spanish and Portuguese magazines. Arregi Diaz de Heredia has contributed to different newspapers and periodicals in the Basque Country, mainly to Egunkaria and Hegats where he is a regular columnist and critic. As translator, he has collaborated in the translation of Wyslawa Szymborska´s poems and in the translation of several Portuguese poets, such as Sophia de Melo, Eugénio de Andrade and Jorge de Sena.
(1979) is a poet, translator, musican, literary critic and journalist. He graduated summa cum laude from the Israeli Music Conservatory in Tel Aviv in 1997. In 2002, he studied at the Department of the Hebrew Bible at Tel Aviv University and from 2002 to 2005 he was a student in the Adi Lautman Interdisciplinary Program for Outstanding Students at Tel Aviv University. He received his MA in Judaic studies from the Tel Aviv University in 2005 and is currently a Doctoral student at the Department of Hebrew Literature at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His publications include Notes from the Miracle Fair: Essays on Modern Poetry (2003), a Hebrew translation of E. E. Cummings: Selected Poems (2003), a book of poetry The Wandering Piano (2005), selected poems in Hebrew translation Max Jacob: Les vrais miracles (2006), Portrait on the Edge of Darkness: Essays on the poetry of Israel Har(2007), poems and a classical music CD Days of the Tel‐Aviv Conservatory (2007). He is currently working on selected poems in Hebrew translation Eugene Guillevic: Parenthèse and Lattices: Essays on Dan Tsalka. He is the recipeint of several awards including the Metula Poetry Festival Prize and the Israel Ministry of Education Prize for Young Poets. He lives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel.
was born in Norwich in 1971. Ground Water (Bloodaxe 2004), his first full-length collection, was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize for Poetry, the Guardian First Book Award and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. He is co-editor of 101 Poems Against War (Faber, 2003) and Strong Words: Modern Poets on Modern Poetry (Bloodaxe, 2000), and in 2005-6 was Poet-in-Residence at the Wordsworth Trust. Matthew has taken part in the Arts Council First Lines poetry tour of the UK in 2001, and was selected by the British Council to participate in a number of writers’ and translators’ workshops, among them: Write On! (Croatia, 2004), Converging Lines (Hungary, 2004), Voices (Argentina, 2007), The New Silk Road (Bangladesh, 2008) and Converging Lines (Greece, 2008). He is a tutor for the Arvon Foundation, the Poetry School and Spread the Word and has taught creative writing in schools and universities. He lives in London where he works as Commissioning Editor, Poetry at Faber and Faber. His biography of Edward Thomas will be published by Faber in 2010.
is director of the British Centre for Literary Translation , based at the University of East Anglia, and a literary translator from French, Spanish and Portuguese. Her most recent translations are the novels Malvinas Requiem by Rodolfo Fogwill, and Dead Horsemeat and Lorraine Connection by Dominique Manotti. Her poetry translations this year include poems by the Argentine author Tomas Eloy Martinez for "Patagonia" and by the Angolan Conceicao Lima for the "Words without Borders" website. She also writes extensively on Latin American photography and her most recent monographs are those on the Peruvian / Amerindian photographer Martin Chambi and the Mexican Manuel Alvarez Bravo. She is currently writing a history of photography in Mexico.
was born in Pembrokeshire and grew up in Cardiff. She attended university in Aberystwyth, Salamanca, Freiburg and London, and studied Spanish and German, the latter to doctorate level. She lectured at Swansea before assuming responsibility for the Arts Council in mid and west Wales. She now works freelance and has translated much Welsh poetry into German and is the co-editor of the anthology of Welsh poetry in English translation The Dragon Has Two Tongues (2003), with John Rowlands. She is the first woman to have won the chair at the Welsh National Eisteddfod. She lives in Carmarthen with her husband and three children.
(1961) is a prose writer and the author of a number of stage plays and dramatisations. In 2004, he won first prize in the Poviedka (Short Story) competition for his prose work Absolútny sluch (Perfect Pitch). Since then he has published collections of short stories under the titles of Karol D. Horváth (2005), Karol D2 Horváth (2005) and Karol 3D Horváth (2006). He is a co-writer of a successful TV sitcom Mafstor and a member of the Živý dôkaz (Living Proof) literary circle. The social and subcultural phenomena of pop culture are typical themes in Horváth's stories. His "heroes" are under the controlling influence of fantasies and obsessions. Horváth can describe aspects of Slovak life in a few words in such a way that they take on a new and often spine-chilling or comic significance. He gives comic dimensions to simple, often banal, episodes and his narration shoots off in an unexpected direction or ends with an absurd conclusion. Horváth's mastery lies in a compressed plot, narrative brevity, and constant hovering on the brink of kitsch and slapstick. Horváth never bores his reader and when it sometimes seems that he has exhausted his options, chimerical vision takes over and assures us that we simply do not understand the "rules of the game" and will never get the hang of the game itself.
poet and critic (1978), graduated in Bulgarian philology at Sofia University in 2001 and defended his PhD on Bulgarian 1920s Modernism at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in 2008. His first book of poetry, Sbogom devetnajsti vek (Farewell To the 19th Century, 2001) won the prestigious 2002 Southern Spring award for the best debut book. His second collection, Bdin (2004) received critical acclaim, as well as the 2006 Svetlostrui Prize for poetry. He regularly publishes poems in anthologies and leading Bulgarian periodicals including Literary Newspaper, Altera, Sega, Capital. His work has been translated into English, Croatian, German and Hungarian. Ivan has participated in poetry festivals festivals abroad including Ars Poetica in Bratslavia in 2007 and the Goran Spring Festival in Croatia in 2009, where he received first prize in the Poetry Marathon in Hvar. Ivan Hristov is also a leading literary critic of his generation with numerous accademic publications and regular participation in conferences both in Bulgaria and abroad.
(1957) is the author of the novels: Weiser Davidek (1987), Mercedes Benz (2001), Castorp (2004), The Last Supper (2007); short stories: Stories for a Time of Relocation (1991), First Love and Other Stories (1996); poems: Poems (1994). His first novel, Weiser Davidek, was acclaimed by critics as "the book of the decade", "a masterpiece", and "a literary triumph". It was widely translated. Huelle is a writer of his own region – Gdansk – and he considers the most important problems of this borderline site of cultures and nations in the painful history of the 20th century. He recognises Günter Grass as his master in this field, and his writing technique owes a lot to Bruno Schulz, for whom the real world was only a sign of a much richer psychic and spiritual reality, full of mysteries and unsolved secrets. Mercedes Benz (2001)paid homage to and was written in a style resembling that of the brilliant Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal. In a tragic history of contemporary Gdansk, Huelle looks not only for the sources of the Polish-German conflicts, but also for his spiritual roots. The perplexed history of Germans, Poles and Jews in the region, is depicted in a an interesting and original fashion, with tolerance at the heart of its aims.
has lead cross-sector partnerships within art, science and technology for the greater part of her career. Trained as a social entrepreneur at the Danish Kaospilot School of Social Innovation and New Business Design, Toyah has initiated and managed numerous projects in Switzerland, Scandinavia and Bosnia- Herzegovina. She is one of the founding members of Ask Sarajevo, a project where 600 Bosnians aged 6-30 painted their dreams for the future on 5000 square metres of blank canvas. Ask Sarajevo became an exhibition that finally funded the restoration of Sarajevo's youth house. Toyah currently resides in Copenhagen, Denmark. She co-founded CSRPLUS in 2007, a creative consultancy aiming to integrate corporate social responsibility in businesses and boost social innovation. Corporate clients aside, CSRPLUS manages its own projects within art, design and culture. The company also has an office in Sarajevo. Toyah directs the Innovation and Business Design section at the Copenhagen College of Engineering. She also is Head of International Communications at CO2PENHAGEN, the world's first CO2 neutral music and arts festival. The groundbreaking showcase of the newest, cleanest technology around takes place prior to the international climate summit COP15, in December 2009.
was born in 1932 and is the author of fifteen works of fiction – novels, novellas, short story collections and children's books – as well as of non-fiction books, radio plays and a film script. Following the independence of Slovakia in 1993, he became the first ever Slovak Ambassador to Canada. He now teaches political science and diplomacy, and lives in Bratislava. Hykisch is one of the major representatives of the Generation of 1966, which rejected the canon of socialist realism and turned its attention to contemporary life of ordinary people. In his short stories and novels Hykisch unmasks the moral apathy and corruption of the time, and the disillusion with life it produced. His most popular books are however his historical novels, The Time of the Masters and Adore the Queen, published in the 1980s and translated into several foreign languages.