Yuri Andrukhovych

(Ukraine, 1960)

Yuri Andrukhovych is one of the most significant writers at the contemporary literary scene in Ukraine. He is a prose writer, poet, essayist, translator, and public intellectual. His works have been translated and published in Poland, Germany, Canada, Hungary, Finland, Croatia, United States, Sweden, Spain and other countries – all together into 22 languages. Yuri Andrukhovych is one of the cofounders of the Bu-Ba-Bu literary group, which is associated with the emergence of Ukrainian postmodernism. He is an author of seven novels, and a few poetry and essays collections. ©Yana Stephanyshyn Andrukhovych has been awarded numerous national and international prizes, including the Herder Prize, the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize, the Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding, the Angelus Award, the Hannah Arendt Prize, and the Goethe Medal.

Other activities involving the participant:

With humor and irony: narrating in turbulent times

Eva Meijer

(Netherlands, 1980) 

Eva Meijer is a philosopher, visual artist, writer and singer-songwriter. They write novels, philosophical essays, academic texts, poems and columns, and their work has been translated into over twenty languages. Recurring themes are language including silence, madness, nonhuman animals, and politics. 
Their philosophical work mostly focuses on language, democracy and social justice, with special attention for nonhuman animals and nature. Meijer currently writes columns and essays for Dutch newspaper NRC.
Their first novel Het schuwste dier (Prometheus) was published in 2011. Short stories and poems have been published in Dutch and Flemish literary magazines, such as De Revisor, Tirade and De Brakke Hond. Their second novel Dagpauwoog was published in November 2013, to critical acclaim. In 2016 the book Dierentalen (Animal Languages) was published, a popular philosophical book about nonhuman animal languages and the question what language actually is. Their third novel Het vogelhuis (Bird Cottage), was published in September 2016 and chosen as one of the books of the month by DWDD book panel on national television. It won the readers' prize of the BNG Bank Literatuurprijs. Dierentalen and Het vogelhuis are translated into Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Swedish and Turkish. In 2017 De soldaat was een dolfijn was published, an essay about political animals, which won the 2018 Hypatia prize. In 2018 Meijer won the Halewijnprijs for all their books. In 2019, De grenzen van mijn taal was published, a philosophical essay about depression. Voorwaarts, a novel, was also published that year. When animals speak: Towards an interspecies democracy, an academic book, came out in November 2019 (New York University Press) and was awarded the ASCA Book Award in 2020. In 2020 their novel De nieuwe rivier was published, a magical-realist murder mystery. In 2021 Meijer wrote the essay for the Dutch Month of Philosophy: Vuurduin. Aantekeningen bij een wereld die verdwijnt. In the same year, the novella Haar vertrouwde gedaante was published. In 2022 Meijer published three books: a novel called Zee Nu, in which the North Sea floods the Netherlands, Verwar het niet met afwezigheid. Over politieke stiltes, an essay about politics and silence, and Misschien is een ander woord voor hoop. Een pleidooi voor meerstemmigheid in het politieke en publieke debat a pamflet about the public debate, and the role of language in politics. In 2023, the poetry collection Het witste woord and the novel Dagen van glas were published.   

Other activities involving the participant:

The language of plants and animals
Echoes of FIL

Carolina Schutti

(Austria, 1976)

Carolina Schutti was born in Innsbruck, where she still lives. She studied German philology, English and American Studies, classical guitar and classical voice. 
Her publications include short stories, poetry and radioplays. She works with musicians and develops interdisciplinary projects. Schutti has received several awards for her literary work, including the European Union Prize for Literature. Her books have been published in twenty countries. 
Carolina Schutti is known for her poetic yet powerful books that pay particular attention to society's outsiders. Her texts are often about the search for identity and home, about escapes from bleak living conditions and about the question of guilt and innocence. Her latest novel Ocean Breeze shows the power that books, education and encounters can have by showing two sisters from the lower classes living in great isolation that the world has more in store for them than a life of poverty and lies.
 

Ulla Lenze

(Mönchengladbach, 1973)

Lenze studied music and philosophy in Cologne and today lives and works as a freelance writer near Berlin. She has published several novels and received numerous awards, such as the Literature Award from the Culture Circle of German Companies and the Lower Rhine Literature Award for all her work. In 2023 she held the Max Cade Chair as a visiting professor at Dartmouth (EU).

Winston Manrique Sabogal

He is a Colombian-Spanish journalist and founder and director of WMagazín, a global digital literary and cultural magazine based in Spain. His vocation is pan-Hispanic and itinerant, participating in the leading fairs and gatherings of writers and the book universe in both America and Europe. This pioneering project caters to a dual, analog, and virtual world, featuring special editions in PDF and print that enrich journalistic genres and explore new narratives through individual and group video interviews, photo stories, video stories, and video chats with both established and emerging authors, as well as professionals in the field.

He collaborates with the Spanish newspaper El País, where he worked for 19 years as an editor and head of books and literature for the Babelia supplement and the Culture section, and was co-editor of its digital edition and the blog Papeles perdidos. He has interviewed leading writers and book professionals from around the world over the past few decades and has written reports on literary creation, the publishing industry, and the promotion of reading. From this work came the titles El destino del libro, Latinoamérica contra los tópicos and Historias del Boom.50 años de la literatura que cambió el español (El País-Amazon).

In Colombia, he worked for the newspapers El Espectador and El Tiempo, the Colombian news agency Colprensa (Research Unit), and the radio newspaper Agrohuila. He reported on issues ranging from the coffee crisis and alliances between paramilitary and religious sects, to social and cultural trends.

He is the author of La gran transformación: la belleza, el amor, el sexo y la felicidad en el siglo XXI (Galaxia Gutenberg), a work that analyzes the accelerated metamorphosis of these four great desires that are changing life. Over two hundred people, from writers and artists to philosophers and sociologists, have contributed to his journalistic articles since the 1990s.

Other activities involving the participant:

"Childness" Landscape in motion
A question of class: stories of fiction and non-fiction
The "other people": animals and nature in literature
Paths in time
Crossroads. Journalism and literature
Two-way journeys of literary agents And a tribute to Antonia Kerrigan