(1976) is a writer and photographer. He earned a BA in English and Philosophy from Hull University in the UK, and since 1998 has worked as a reporter and cultural editor at Al-Ahram Weekly, the Cairo-based English-language newspaper. In 2008-09 he spent a year working as a features writer at Abu Dhabi-based daily The National. His reportage, travel writing, photography, fiction and poetry – written originally in both Arabic and English – have appeared in numerous publications in Cairo, Beirut, London, Berlin, Italy and the US, as well as online. Youssef Rakha has exhibited his photos at the Goethe Institute, Cairo, and has published four books in Arabic: a collection of short stories, Azhar Al-Shams (1999, Dar Sharqiyat), a photo travelogue, Beirut shi mahal (2006, Kitab Amkenah), and two books of travel writing with the Beirut-based Dar Riyad El Rayyes. His poems are soon to appear in a book entitled Kull Amakinina. He is currently working on his first novel.
was born in western Hungary, close to the border with Austria. After finishing secondary school she went to Budapest to study Hungarian and English Literature. She assisted in a library for a while and from 1982 until 1986 worked as an editor for the leading Hungarian publisher Helikon. She has been a full-time poet and translator since 1986. She received the Hungarian Attila József prize for her poetry. In 1994 the Oxford University Press published New Life, a selection from her work, translated by George Szirtes. For this translation Szirtes was awarded the European Poetry Translation Prize.
from Hungary was born in Szekszárd in 1952. She is a member of a number of organisations such as Szépírók Társasága (The Literature Society), MAOE and PEN. She has published five collections of poetry: Máshol (Elsewhere) 1985, A darázs szeme (Eye of the Wasp) 1990, Zadarnál a tenger (The Sea by Zadar) 1997, Arc poétika, 2006, Mindenhol jó (Everywhere’s Good) 2007. Her works have been published in Switzerland in German (translated by András Sándor) and she has also been published in German anthologies such as Frauenfelder Lyriktage, Poesie Agenda, Ungarische Poeten. She has been in receipt of a number of bursaries, including from the Rosenthal Institute for the Holocaust (1995).
(1970) poet and translator form French. He has published six books for poetry, including Anima (1999), Świat i Antyświat (World and Anti-world, 2003) and Kolonie (Colony, 2006), and the epic poem Dwanaście stacj (Twelve stations, 2004).
was born in 1956 in Bruges, in the Bordeaux region, in a family of Italian immigrants, and studied Greek and Literature. Her erotic novel Le Boucher (1988) published in English as The Butcher, became a bestseller translated into twenty-five languages. A prolific writer and publicist, her recent work includes the anti-racist Poupée, anale nationale (1998), the novel Moha m’aime (1999), inspired by her time spent in Morocco, and Nus devant les fantômes (2000) a fictional account of Milena Jesenská’s relationship with Franz Kafka, remembered during the winter of 1944 in the concentration camp of Ravensbrück. Alina Reyes has four sons and divides her time between Paris, the Pyrenees and various foreign locations.
was born and raised in New Quay, Ceredigion, in Wales. She graduated from Cambridge University in 1991 with degrees in Greek and Latin and is studying Creative Writing at Cardiff University. In 1996 she obtained a bursary of the Arts Council of Wales in order to write her fist collection of poems Stranded on Ithaca. In 2001 she published her second collection of poems Rockclimbing in Silk. She works as editor of poetry for the New Welsh Review and divides her time between New Quay, Paris and Oxford.
uses a range of media including sculptural and light forms with text and interventions to explore ideas about power. From 2003 - 2006 he studied Interactive arts at Manchester Metropolitan University. Since 2006 he has been a Project Manager at UHC, an ethical design cooperative. For Richardson, being an artist is a constant process of re-assessing, questioning and interrogating ideas. www.joe-richardson.co.uk
studied in Frankfurt and Istanbul and holds a Master's degree in Turkish and Islamic studies. He has worked as translator and bibliographer. Since the early seventies he has been focussing on contemporary Turkish literature, especially on literature written by Turks living in Germany and Turks writing about Germany. His study Das Deutschlandbild in der modernen türkischen Literatur (The Image of Germany in Modern Turkish Literature) was published in 1983, and the annotated bibliography Über das Leben in Bitterland. Bibliographie zur türkischen Deutschlandliteratur (Life in Bitterland: A Bibliography of Turkish Literature concerned with Germany) in 1990, and is being currently updated. He has translated texts by many well-known Turkish authors including three novels by Zülfü Livaneli, Halid Ziya Uşaklıgil's novel Verbotene Lieben (Forbidden Loves) and three anthologies of Turkish short stories, which appeared in the bilingual series of the Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag (dtv).
was born in Barcelona 1940. He worked as an adult teacher and for different publishing companies for over fifteen years. He has written fiction, humour, essays and poetry. He writes often for the major Barcelona newspapers and is a well known political and cultural commentator for the radio. For eight years he was the secretary of the Catalan Writers Union. He has also written on gastronomy and wine and defines himself as “a writer of oral communication”. He belongs to different organisations and has been an MP at the Catalan Parliament since 1987 for the left and the green coalition Iniciativa per Catalunya / Els Verds. One of his most satirical works Bla, Bla, Bla was published in Germany as Dicke Bevorzug by Eichborn Verlag in 1990.
was born at 5th April 1972. in Belgrade, Serbia. Since 1998-2004 she lived in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Now she lives in Belgrade. She graduated in Serbian language and literature on Faculty of Philology, Belgrade. She has been publishing her poetry since the age of eighteen, and has participated in several festivals of poetry in Serbia, Macedonia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Hercegovina. Since now she has been published five books of poetry: Snovidna voda (Dreamwater), 1994; Uže od peska (Rope of sand), 1997; Zabava za dokone kćeri (Party for lazybones daughters), 1999; Život na razglednici (Life on a postcard), 2003; Oko nule, (Round the Zero) 2006; Her poetry was translated in several languages: Slovenian, Macedonian, German, English, Slovakian, Sweden, Polish and is represented in several anthologies. Her books were translated on Slovenian language ( Življenje na razglednici, 2005, Ljubljana, Slovenia), Slowakian (Pred tridsiatkou, 2001, Banska Bystrica, Slowakia), and German language ( So dunkel, so hell, 2007, Salzburg, Austria.) Poetry awards: – Book award - Branko Radičević for the best first book of poetry in Serbia (for the book Dreamwater), 1994. – Book award - Branko Miljković (for the book Party for the Lazybone Daughters), 2000. – German award - Hubert Burda Preis for the best young East and South European poetry, 2005. Fellowships: Fellowship of German foundation Literarisches Coloquium Berlin, under the program for East European writers and journalists, in January 2005. She is member of: Srpsko književno društvo (Serbian Association of Writers), Serbian P.E.N. Center, and Association of Literary Translators of Serbia and an active translator from Slovenian and English language. Since now she has been translated ten prose and poetry books from Slovenian language, and one book from English language (Toby Litt, Exhibitionism, 2006).
is an independent designer and multidiscipline artist combining architecture with fine art and dance. She studied Architecture at Wizo Haifa Academy of Art and is now a lecturer of architecture and interior design at 6B studio, a preparatory academy for the studies of design. From 1996 Rotem danced in several of the leading contemporary dance groups in Israel such as Ido Tadmor Dance group, Fresco Dance Group and others. In 2005 she joined the art group Bodies under the instruction of Doron Polak. The group members come from different disciplines and collaborate by doing group improvisations that inspire each member to develop his own art. After processing and creating, the group exhibits the works, which usually display a variety of photography, video, fine art and more. Her art is diverse by techniques and themes, and is constantly in search of the expression of the present, sometimes by using past elements. Rotem has also become an independent art producer and curator. Recently she produced the photography exhibition in China Inside Israel and curated the exhibition Seismic Vibes at Zygota Studio.
was born in Garndolbenmaen in North Wales and has lived in Cardiff for several years. His first novel, Bingo (1985), has been described as the first post modern Welsh novel. Y Pla, his second novel, won the prize of the Arts Council of Wales in 1988 and has been translated into English, German and French. Paradwys (Paradise, 2001) is his third novel.
was born in 1958 and grew up in Stirlingshire, Scotland. A poet, editor, novelist and publisher, he is general editor of Itchy Coo, the successful Scots children’s book imprint. His novel Joseph Knight, 2003, won the Saltire Society Book of the Year and the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year awards. His latest novel, The Testament of Gideon Mack, was published by Hamish Hamilton in 2006, while the collection Voyage Of Intent: Sonnets And Essays From The Scottish Parliament, 2005, expresses the aspirations of the Scottish people after devolution.
is a poet, novelist and playwright. He is one of Portugal’s most prolific and acclaimed dramatists. Born in Nazaré in 1949, he studied at Lisbon University. During the last years of dictatorship, he was exiled to France, from where he returned to Portugal after the Revolution in 1974. He then began his thirty-year-long career as a journalist. Today, he is a full-time writer. He has published many poetry collections, including a tetralogy of poems, Tetralogia da Assombração (The Haunting Tetralogy). His theatre works include The Third Floor, Six Women under Surveillance and White Man, Black Man, all of which have won major theatre awards in Portugal.
(born 1960) is a German writer and filmmaker. He was a student of Philosophy, Anthropology and Psychology at the Free University of Berlin. His anthropological field research was conducted in Israel and the Palestinian territories (1987,1991), Yemen (1993-1994), the United States and Mali. The main subject of Roes' poetical and academic work is the role of the "stranger" or the "foreigner" in our societies. The European view of the Arab world is one of the main topics in his major novels and recent films. His wide talent as a poet, novelist, play writer, essayist and film maker and his interest in outsiders puts him into the tradition of Jean Cocteau, Pasolini or Bruce Chatwin.
, born in 1959 in Tortosa, is a poet, writer and translator. His collected poems Córrer la toronja (Run the Orange) were published in 2002, bringing together poetry published over twenty years, while in L’estiu de les paparres o la societat secreta dels poetes (The Summer of the Pests or the Secret Society of the Poets, 2002) he gathered some of his published and unpublished articles and essays. He has edited seven anthologies of Catalan poetry and translated W. B. Yeats and Manoel de Barros. His writing has been set to music and staged, including his latest book I pelava la taronja amb les dents (And Peeled the Orange with the Teeth, 2007) performed by the Brazilian singer Taize and musician Edu Tupi. He teaches at the Theatre Institute in Barcelona.
was born in Tallinn in 1979, where he studied Estonian linguistics at the Pedagogical University of Tallinn, and where he taught literature at a secondary school. Rooste is editor of the cultural weekly Sirp and since March 2007, he has been head of the Estonian Institute in Helsinki. In 1999, Rooste published his first collection Sonetid (Sonnets, awarded the Betti Alver Prize).
1948) was born in southern Austria. She studied Slavic and Romance languages in Vienna and in Prague. Her 1975 doctoral thesis was entitled Avant-Garde Czech Art in the 1920s: Poetics. Since 1976 she has worked freelance, teaching 20th Century Czech Literature to university students, publishing, editing and translating. (Work which she published in anthologies and periodicals appears under the name Hansen-Löve until 1987.) Her majors publications include the anthology Mähren in the series Europa erlesen (Wieser Verlag, Klagenfurt 1997), and a special edition of Lichtungen magazine entitled Literature from Brno/Brünn.
John Rowlands, Emeritus Professor of Welsh at the University of Wales, co-edited The Bloodaxe Book of Modern Welsh Poetry with the Welsh-language poet Menna Elfyn, the most comprehensive volume of its kind, which received a Poetry Book Society Recommendation in 2003. A previous editor of the literary journals Llais Llyfrau and Taliesin, and author of several critical volumes in both Welsh and English, he is also known as a novelist who broke the sexual and psychological taboos still prevalent in the Welsh-language novel of the 60s. He is the co-author of the volume Profiles, together with the late poet and critic, Glyn Jones. For further details, see the website: www.ygoedeneirin.co.uk
was born in Prague in 1976. She is editor of the cultural internet magazine Dobrá adresa. Her first poetry book Ludwig was published to general acclaim in 1999. Her second, Není nutné, abyste me navštěvoval (No need for you to visit me, 2002) was followed by a collection of short stories Noci, noci (Nights, nights, 2004). Her latest book of poems is Popel a slast (Ashes and Pleasure, 2005). Her first theatre play has won her a residency at the Royal Court Theatre in London and will be staged in Prague in 2008.
from Italy, was born in 1949 and attended the University of Bologna, where he studied modern literature. After a period of teaching, he became editor with the publisher Garzanti in Milan, and is presently the general editor of the Edizioni del Leone in Venice. Since his debut in 1972 he has published nine volumes of poetry, some of which were awarded major poetry prizes and have been translated into other languages. He has also published novels, including Preparativi per la partenza (Preparations for departure, 2003), essays, stories and translations from English.
was born in 1942 in Gudbrandsdalen. One of the most prominent contemporary Norwegian poets, he has worked in publishing and as editor of Poesi Magasin. Since his debut in 1973, he has published five collections of poetry, including his latest, Indre Krets (Inner Circle) which was awarded the prestigious Norwegian Poetryclub-Prize on its publication in 1999. Ruste is also known for his translations, notably of Ted Hughes’s Crow and Birthday Letters. Among his other translations are versions of Roald Dahl’s Dirty Beasts and Rhyme Stew, and The Little Zen Companion by David Schiller. Together with Michael Konupek he published the Norwegian translation of Poetry by Ivan Diviš in 2000. Arne Ruste lives in Son, a small fishing village near Oslo.