Europa28

BAKIĆ, Asja

(Tuzla, 1982) She is a Bosnian poet, writer and translator. She graduated from University of Tuzla where she obtained a degree in Bosnian Language and Literature. Her debut poetry collection, It Can Be a Cactus, as Long as it Stings (2009) was nominated for Kiklop literary award in 2010, and her short story collection, Mars, was shortlisted for the Edo Budiša Award for young writers. Bakić has translated Emily Dickinson, Henri Michaux and Alejandra Pizarnik among others from English, French, German and Spanish into Croatian. She also writes a blog In the Realm of Melancholy (asjaba.com) and is one of the editors and authors of Muff (muf.com.hr), a web page dedicated to feminist readings of popular culture.

BÁN, Zsófia

Is a Hungarian writer, critic and scholar. Her recent works include the novel, Night School: A Reader for Grownups (Open Letter Books, 2019), and The Summer of Our Discontent (Matthes und Seitz and DAADMarch, 2019), a book of essays exploring the visual representation of historical memory. Bán is the recipient of a number of prizes for fiction, essay writing and criticism, and was writer-in-residence with the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Programme in 2015/16. She lives and works in Budapest where she is Associate Professor of American Studies at Eötvös Loránd University.

BECK, Annelies

(Belgium, 1973) is a writer and journalist. She has lived in the Netherlands, Brazil, the UK and Belgium. She read History at Ghent and obtained an MA in Brazilian Studies at ILAS, University of London. Beck currently presents the daily current affairs TV programme TerZake at the VRT (Belgian public broadcasting), and is a regular contributor to various newspapers, including De Standaard and De Morgen. She is the author of Across the Channel (De Geus, 2011) which traces the plight of Belgian refugees in Glasgow during the First World War, and Frenzy (De Geus, 2019) which is set in Brazil.

BENCIVELLI, Silvia

Is a science journalist, writer and radio/TV broadcaster. She has been working for RAI, the Italian national public broadcasting company, for fifteen years as a presenter on various programmes. She writes about science for various publications, including La Repubblica, Le Scienze and Focus and teaches Science Journalism at La Sapienza - University of Rome and at the University of Bari, as well as Communication and Science Journalism at several institutions. Her works include the novel, My Witch Friends (Einaudi, 2017), and the essays Why We Like Music: Ear, Emotion, Evolution (Music Word Media Group), È la medicina, bellezza! - Perché è difficile parlare di salute (with Daniela Ovadia, Carocci, 2016) and Comunicare la scienza (with Francesco Paolo De Ceglia, Carocci, 2013). Her latest essay is entitled Sospettosi (Einaudi, May 2019). She has received numerous awards for her work as a journalist and editor.

COTTAM, Hilary

DWAN, Lisa

Lisa Dwan is an Irish performer, director & writer. Having originally trained in the UK as a ballet dancer, including dancing with Rudolf Nureyev in Coppelia in Dublin, & The London Lewis Ballet Company she began acting professionally in her teens. She has worked extensively in theatre, film, and television, both internationally and in her native Ireland. She is currently shooting a new T.V series for Netflix called TOP BOY produced by Drake & Lebron James. She has just completed staring in Harold Pinters ‘The Lover & The Collection’ at STC in Washington DC where she won the 2018 - 2019 Emery Battis award for outstanding contribution to acting.

Dwan writes, presents, lectures and teaches regularly on theatre, culture, gender and Beckett (BBC radio and television, NPR, the Guardian, the Telegraph, École Normale Supérieure, Trinity College Dublin , Reading University, MIT, Oxford University, Cambridge University, Princeton, NYU and has held a teaching position at Columbia University for the past two years. She recently completed a documentary for the BBC on Beckett and Dante and has been commissioned to write a book on Beckett for Virago. In 2017 she held the Atelier residency in Princeton University teaching a course on Becketts prose work.

Dwan is currently a fellow at MIT Arts and was a fellow at the School of Art and Ballet at New York University in 2017-2018. In 2018-2019, she was alos a distinguished artist in residence at Columbia University, where she is teaching at the Institute of Women and Gender studies and developing a new theatre piece with Colm Toibin based on Antigone. It will have its world premiere at The Gate Theatre in Dublin this November, as well as a new version of Medea which she is co-writing with Margaret Atwood.

HOFSTETTER, Yvonne

(1966) Jurist and essayist, she began her career in information technology in 1999 as a product manager for distributed artificial intelligence systems. In 2001, Hofstetter joined the staff of EXE Technologies, a company that optimized the value chains of internationally active companies with the help of artificial intelligence. After a company merger in 2004, Hofstetter left the American company and took over the management of the German branch of an Irish fintech company that specialized in algorithmic currency trading. On the occasion of the 2008-2009 financial crisis, a management buyout took place and TERAMARK Technologies GmbH was founded in the north of Munich, a cognitive assistance systems company that Hofstetter managed until 2019. Hofstetter is a sought-after keynote speaker on the subject of digitalisation. In 2014 she published Sie wissen alles, followed by Das Ende der Demokratie in 2016, both books became bestsellers. Hofstetter received the 53^rd Theodor Heuss Prize in 2018 for her democratic commitment and for her commitment to artificial intelligence with guard rails. Hofstetter lives in Freising near Munich, and in Vienna.

IKSTENA, Nora

Is a prose writer and essayist. She obtained a degree in Philology from the University of Latvia in 1992 and went on to study English literature at Columbia University. She is a prolific author of biographical fiction, non-fiction, scripts, essays, and short stories. Her novel Soviet Milk is a national bestsller in Latvia and has been published in more than 20 countries. It was nominated for both the EBRD Prize and The Republic of Consciousness Prize in 2019. Ikstena is a member, and former chair, of the National Culture Council and a co-founder of the International Writers and Translators’ House in Ventspils. In 2006, she received prestigious Baltic Assembly Award, as well as the Three Star Order of Latvia.

KANGRO, Maarja

Kangro has been described as one of the most formidable voices of her generation in Estonia. She has published six collections of poetry, four volumes of fiction and a book of essays, and has also written five opera librettos. She has won numerous awards, among them, twice, the most important literature prize in Estonia, the Estonian Cultural Endowment’s Literary Award (being so far the youngest author to have won the prize in the categories of both poetry and fiction). Her works have been translated into 15 languages, and she is herself a translator, translating mainly poetry and contemporary philosophy (among others Agamben, Vattimo, Leopardi, Zanzotto, Enzensberger). She currently lives in Tallinn.

KASSABOVA, Kapka

Is the author of three narrative non-fiction books: Street Without a Name (Granta, 2008), Twelve Minutes of Love (Granta, 2011), and Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe (Granta/ Greywolf, 2017) which won the British Academy’s Al-Rodhan Prize, the Saltire Book of the Year, the Stanford-Dolman Book of the Year, the Highland Book Prize, and was shortlisted for the US National Book Critics’ Circle Award. Kassabova grew up in Sofia and as a young adult in the 1990s emigrated with her family to New Zealand where she studied French and Russian Literature and published her first poetry and fiction. Since 2005 she has lived in Scotland. Her native Balkans are the location for both Border and her new book, To The Lake: A Journey of War and Peace (Granta/Greywolf, 2020).

KOUVELAKI, Sofia

KRECKÉ, Carine

Is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Luxembourg and Spain. She holds a PhD degree in Literature and Art from the University of Provence and a PhD in Economic Science from the Aix Marseille University. She regularly collaborates with her twin sister Elisabeth, (economist and artist), on artistic and non-artistic (legal, economic and social science) projects, which are often intertwined. Krecké relies on photography, drawing, painting, as well as literature (poetry, novel, play, essay) to apprehend issues such as mass surveillance, simulacra and voyeurism in our digital world. Over the past 15 years, her work has been shown at numerous exhibitions and international events such as the European Month of Photography, Rencontres Internationales Paris-Madrid-Berlin, Paris-Photo, Drawing Now and Rencontres Internationales de Photographie d’Arles.

MUSCAT, Caroline

Caroline Muscat is an award-winning investigative journalist and the co-founder and editor of The Shift News, an online news portal launched in November 2017 as an investigative news outlet to address the gap in independent journalism in Malta. She was the former News Editor of The Times of Malta and The Sunday Times of Malta, the country’s leading newspaper. Her main area of focus is corruption and human rights. She contributed to and co-edited the book, Invicta: The Life and Work of Daphne Caruana Galizia, a journalist assassinated in Malta in October 2017. As an activist, Muscat began her career at Greenpeace, where she was Regional Communications and Campaigns Director from 1999 to 2003.

NADJARIAN, Nora

NICOLAIE, Ioana

NOWICKA, Bronka

She is an interdisciplinary artist, a Doctor of Fine Art and a writer and a lecturer at the National Film School in Łódź. Her literary work has been published by Znak, (Poland), Književna smotra, Sic (Croatia), Literatūra ir menas (Lithuania), Seedings (the USA), Poetry Wales and Modern Poetry in Translation (Great Britain). She has presented her visual works, among others, at the Susanne Burmester Galerie in Germany, Trubarjeva Hiša Literature in Slovenia and Kunstnernes Hus in Norway. She has won the Nike Literary Award and the Złoty Środek Poezji (Golden Mean of Poetry) Award for her book To Feed a Stone. In 2017, she became a laureate of the New Voices From Europe project, carried out as part of the Literary Europe Live platform and offering support to outstanding European writers after their debuts.

NVOTOVÁ, Tereza

Tereza Nvotová (1988, Trnava, Czechoslovakia) graduated in direction from the FAMU film academy in Prague. Her feature debut Filthy has been screened at major festivals around the world including Rotterdam, Karlovy Vary, Cairo, and Santa Barbara. During its distribution Filthy took home more than 20 awards, making it one of the most successful Czech and Slovak films of the year. Nvotová collaborates with various broadcasting companies, most notably HBO Europe which has co-produced her feature debut and two documentary films. Her latest HBO documentary The Lust for Power has been shortlisted for the European Film Academy Awards 2019. She is an alumnus of 2019 Berlinale Talents, and is currently working on her second feature, The Nightsiren, as well as the television mini-series Convictions based on the Cold War-era autobiography of Jo Langer.

PESSOA, Ana

Ana Pessoa (1982) is a Portuguese writer and translator living in Brussels. She has published several books for young adults: Detour, Here is a good place, Mary John, Supergiant (White Ravens Catalogue, 2015) and The Karate Girls’ Red Notebook (Branquinho da Fonseca prize 2011). Pessoa’s books are also published in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. In her free time she writes in a blog (www.belgavista.blogspot.com) and participates in several writers’ groups. Many of her stories have won awards in Portugal and abroad (Jovens Criadores 2013, Portugal; Castello di Duino 2011, Italy; Sea of Words 2010, Spain). She was one of the 39 emerging writers under 40 years old selected to participate in the European Children’s Literature Hay Festival – Aarhus 39 in 2017.

PORTELA, Edurne

RABINOWICH, Julya

Julya Rabinowich was born in St. Petersburg in 1970, but has lived in Vienna since 1977, where she also studied. She works as a writer and columnist, and also worked as an interpreter until 2006. She is the author of Splithead (2008), which won awards including the 2009 Rauriser Literaturpreis, Herznovelle (2011), nominated for the Prix du Livre Européen and Dazwischen: Ich, her first book for children. Rabinowich has been awarded the Friedrich-Gerstäcker Prize, the Österreichischer Kinder- und Jugendbuchpreis award and the Luchs Prize (Die Zeit & Radio Bremen), and one of her works was selected among the seven best books for young readers (Deutschlandfunk). In 2019, she published the children’s book Hinter Glas.

RAMQVIST, Karolina

Karolina Ramqvist (Gothenburg, 1976) is one of the most influential writers and feminists of her generation in Sweden. She has written five novels and is widely celebrated for her powerful explorations of contemporary issues such as sexuality, commercialization, isolation and belonging. In 2015, Ramqvist was awarded the prestigious P.O. Enquist Literary Prize for The White City (Den vita staden), and for her "unique and strong position in Swedish literature". Her latest novel, It’s the night, is a personal essay about the different roles of the writer. She is currently working on an essayistic novel entitled Bear Woman about a writer whose life becomes intertwined with the forgotten fate of a 16th century noblewoman, Marguerite de La Rocque, who survived harrowing years alone on a deserted island.

Photo: © Jasmin Storch

RYCHLIKOVA, Apolena

Apolena Rychlíková (1989) is a Czech filmmaker, journalist and publicist interested in social and political topics, particularly problems of inequality, housing, racism and gender. She graduated from FAMU (the Film Academy in Prague) and writes for the Czech left-wing website A2larm.cz, public radio and cooperates with Czech public TV. Her latest work Limits of Work was named Best Czech Documentary in the Czech Joy section at the 21st Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival. She has also won a prize for Best Opinion Journalism. She has two daughters and believes that a better world is possible.

SALECL, Renata

Philosopher and sociologist. She is Professor of Psychology and Psychoanalysis of Law at the School of Law, Birkbeck College, University of London and Senior Researcher at the Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She is also Recurring Visiting Professor at the Cardozo School of Law in New York. Her latest book, Tyranny of Choice (Profile Books, 2011), has been translated into 15 languages and was featured at TED Global. Her previous books include: The Spoils of Freedom: Psychoanalysis and Feminism After the Fall of Socialism (Routledge 1994), (Per) versions of Love and Hate (Verso, 1998), and On Anxiety (Routledge 2004). Her most recent book is titled A Passion for Ignorance: What We Choose Not to Know and Why (Princeton University Press, 2020). Salecl has also published numerous articles on contemporary art, among them catalogue essays on Jenny Holzer, Anthony Gormley and Sarah Sze.

SLIMANI, Leïla

A graduate of l’Institut d’Études Plitiques in Paris and ESCP Europe, Leïla Slimani is a Franco-Moroccan journalist and writer. She has published two novels with Éditions Gallimard: Dans le jardin de l'ogre, and Chanson douce, and received the Prix Goncourt (2016), being the 12th woman to win that prize. She is also the author of a comic book, Paroles d’honneur, and an essay, Sexe et mensonges, published by Les Arènes. Through her work, she defends women’s rights by addressing, in particular, female sexuality. In 2017, she became the Personal Representative of the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, to the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie. Her most recent publications Le parfum des fleurs la nuit and Le pays des autres.

TELLER, Janne

TURUNEN, Saara

Saara Turunen is an internationally acclaimed and award-winning author, playwright and director. Much of her work examines the themes of art, identity and social norms. Turunen is known for her two highly acclaimed novels, Love/Monster (2015) and The Bystander (2018), but also for her work in theatre. Her plays have garnered brilliant reviews, and have been translated into numerous languages and performed all around the world. Turunen was awarded the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize in 2015, and the Finland Prize in 2016, both high-profile awards given annually in Finland.

VITAITE, Zydrune

Žydrūnė Vitaitė’s experience includes business development and operations in technological companies, as well as management and leadership roles both in business and NGOs. She is president of AIESEC Lithuania, implementing projects on sustainable NGO development and youth leadership education, and Head of Sales at the engieering company ELDES. Vitaité is also the co-founder of Women Go Tech –the first mentorship program in Lithuania to encourage women to choose a career in ICT and engineering. The program is patronised by the President of Lithuania, Dalia Grybauskaitė, and supported by various other international corporations (www.womengotech.lt). She has developed numerous local and international conferences, and reguarly speaks at global events (including the WEF Annual Meeting in Davos 2018, OSCE conferences, WPL Gathering in Lithuania) on topics of women’s empowerment, gender equality, women in tech, men’s role in gender parity, community building and youth engagement.

WEKKER, Gloria

(Paramaribo, 1950) Gloria Wekker is an Afro-Surinamese Dutch anthropologist and writer. She is Professor Emerita in Gender Studies, Faculty of the Humanities, at the University of Utrecht. One part of her research focus has been the study of gender and sexuality in the Afro-Caribbean region and diaspora, while another important theme has been the ways that race still structures life in the Netherlands after 400 years of colonial rule. Among her publications is The Politics of Passion; Women's Sexual Culture in the Afro-Surinamese Diaspora (Columbia University Press, 2006), for which she won the American Anthropological Association’s Ruth Benedict Prize (December 2007). More recently, she wrote White Innocence; Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race (Duke University Press, 2016), to much critical acclaim.