Your Language, Passport and Two, Three Photos

Doris Akrap is a German-Croatian journalist. Since 2008 she is a writer, columnist and editor for taz. She is a board member of PEN Berlin.

Dirk Auer, born in 1970, studied sociology and political science and received his doctorate from the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg in 2003. Since 2006, he has been working as a freelance Southeast Europe correspondent, mainly for radio. He lived in Sofia for seven years, followed by three years in Belgrade. He is the author of radio features on topics such as migration, minorities and dealing with the past in the Balkans. He now lives in Berlin.

Asja Bakić, born in 1982, is a Bosnian-Croatian author and cultural critic. She has published a book of poetry entitled Es kann ein Kaktus sein, solange er sticht (2009) and two collections of short stories, Mars (2015) and Leckermäulchen (2020). Her fourth book, Come, I’m Sitting on Your Face (2020), is a collection of essays about pop culture. She lives in Zagreb.

Since February 2022 Ralf Beste is Head of the Department for Culture and Society at the Federal Foreign Office. Beste, born in 1966 in Witten, studied history in Bochum, Bielefeld and Baltimore. After an internship at Ruhr Nachrichten, he worked for more than 20 years as an editor (for example at SPIEGEL). In 2014, he became Deputy Head of the Planning Staff at the Federal Foreign Office, in 2016 Commissioner for Strategic Communication, and in 2017 Head of the Planning Staff. From 2019 to the beginning of 2022, Beste was Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Republic of Austria.

Florian Bieber is Professor of Southeast European History and Politics at the Centre for Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz. He coordinates the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group (BiEPAG). He has been a Visiting Fellow or Visiting Professor at Cornell University, New York University, the London School of Economics and the Central European University. His recent publications include Pulverfass Balkan (Ch.Links 2023), Debating Nationalism (Bloomsbury 2020), and The Rise of Authoritarianism in the Western Balkans (Palgrave 2020).

Jeanette Blank was born in Liechtenstein in 1981 and studied German language and literature, social education and journalism in Zurich. She now lives in the Lucerne area, where she works as a youth worker and project manager/coach. She has published texts in various magazines and newspapers. She runs a literary blog with photos, poems and short texts entitled ‘Von der Freiheit zu träumen’.

Alexandru Bulucz, was born in 1987 in Alba Iulia, Romania, where he spent the first 13 years of his life. He studied German and comparative literature in Frankfurt am Main. He is a poet, editor, translator and critic. His poetry debut Aus sein auf uns was published in 2016 and he was awarded the Wolfgang Weyrauch Prize in 2019 for poems from was Petersilie über die Seele weiß. In 2022, he was awarded the Deutschlandfunk Prize at the Days of German-Language Literature in Klagenfurt. He lives in Berlin.

Mircea Cărtărescu was born in Bucharest in 1956, where he lives and works. Numerous stays abroad included sojourns in Berlin, Stuttgart, Vienna, and Florence. He is the recipient of the Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding (2015), the Austrian State Prize for European Literature (2015), the Thomas Mann Prize, and Premio Formentor (both 2018). His most recent publications in German are the “Orbitor” trilogy (2007 to 2014), the short story collection Die schönen Fremden (2016) and the novels Solenoid (2019), Melancolia (2022) and Theodoros (2024). In 2022 he was awarded the FIL Prize for Romance Languages. He is currently nominated for the International Booker Prize for his novel Solenoid.

Antje Contius, born in 1966 in North Hesse, is Director of the S. Fischer Foundation since 2008. She studied Slavic studies in Münster, Freiburg, Frankfurt/Main, Moscow, Warsaw and Sofia. As a freelance editor, she worked for publishing houses in Austria, Germany and Switzerland and was particularly committed to Eastern European literature. She also pursued this focus as a consultant for Eastern Europe and the Middle East in the foreign department of the Leipzig Trade Fair and as head of this department from 1995-1998. She joined the S. Fischer Foundation in 2002.

Katy Derbyshire translates contemporary German-language literature into English, for example works by Clemens Meyer, Inka Parei and Judith Hermann.

When The New Yorker writes that you are one of the most famous Bulgarian songwriters (under the headline The Extravagant Exuberance of Ivo Dimchev), that would certainly be a reason for others to be thrilled. Not so the choreographer, theatre maker, visual artist, photographer and musician Ivo Dimchev, who seems to have been born oozing cool, nothing-can-ruffle-me composure. Although only in his forties, Dimchev has already created more than 30 stage works, won international accolades for dance and theatre performances and presented his works worldwide, meshing music, dance and theatre. The queer artist from Sofia is bound to enchant the Leipzig audience with his performance.

Vedran Džihić is Senior Researcher at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs (oiip) and teaches at Vienna University and the University of Applied Arts Vienna. He is the director of the Center of Advanced Studies Southeastern Europe at the University of Rijeka and is a member of the “Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group”. Džihić is the author of numerous books and publications and is active in the realms of policy advisory and public debates. His research focuses on democracy development, nationalism, authoritarianism, EU enlargement and foreign policy, developments in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, protest movements, migration and democracy.

Zdravka Evtimova was born in Pernik in 1959, where she still lives today. She studied English philology in Veliko Tarnovo and St. Louis/Missouri. She travels daily by train to work as a specialist translator in a Sofia ministry. Translates novels and science fiction from American, writes short and long prose. Her books were published early on in the USA and Canada, and are now also published in Great Britain, Italy, North Macedonia, Serbia, Greece, Israel and China.

Zuzana Finger, born 1959 in Sala (Czechoslovakia), studied Slavic languages and Balkan studies in Berlin. Since 2010 she is working in a care home for Sudeten Germansn. In 2013, 2014 and 2015 she gave lectures on Albanian studies at LMU München. Zuzana Finger translates from the Albanian, Serbian, Slovak and Czech into German. Her translations include works by Eqrem Basha and Jeton Neziraj.

Carl Henrik Fredriksson is a Swedish editor, essayist and translator living in Vienna. He is co-founder of Eurozine, whose editor-in-chief and president he was until 2015. He is programme director of Debates on Europe and permanent fellow at the Institut für Medien- und Kommunikationspolitik, Cologne. He is the former editor-in-chief of Sweden’s oldest cultural journal Ord&Bild.

Maja Gebhardt was born in Sarajevo in 1981 and came to Germany as a refugee in 1992 because of the war in her home country. In 2005, she completed her German and English studies at the LMU Munich with a Magister Artium. Afterwards, she taught German as a foreign language in integration courses and worked as an examiner in the language centre of the association “Hilfe von Mensch zu Mensch”, but also in the Balkan Days team, which she still supports today by moderating the culture programme and organising its literature day. Since 2018, she has been living in Berlin, where she now organises book presentations for the eta Verlag and author talks for the BKS book club, where she also enjoys interpreting and translating from the BKMS languages into German.

Sebastian Guggolz, born in 1982 on Lake Constance, studied art history, German studies and folklore in Hamburg. After several years as an editor at Matthes & Seitz Berlin, he founded Guggolz Verlag in 2014, where he publishes new and rediscovered translations of forgotten classics from Northern and Eastern Europe. In 2016 he was honoured with the Übersetzerbarke, in 2017 he received the Kurt Wolff Förderpreis and in 2019 and 2020 Guggolz Verlag was awarded the Deutscher Verlagspreis. In 2022, he received the top prize of the German Publishing Award and the Hotlist Prize. Since 2022, he has also been team leader for classics in the editorial department of S. Fischer Verlag.

Amir Kamber, born in 1977 in Sanski Most, grew up in Prijedor, from where he had to flee in 1992. He lives in Sarajevo and Germany, works for Westdeutscher Rundfunk and writes in Bosnian and German.

Jehona Kicaj, born in 1991 in Suhareka, Kosovo, is an author and editor. She studied Philosophy, German Studies and Modern German Literature in Hanover. She currently works as an editor for an international academic book publisher and is co-editor of the literary magazine Echo&Narziss. Kicaj writes literary and essayistic texts. She has received the SchreibZeit scholarship from the Lower Saxony Foundation and the Spaltmaße scholarship from the Jürgen Ponto Foundation, among others. Her debut novel ë will be published by Wallstein Verlag in 2025.

Erwin Köstler is an Austrian translator of Slovenian literature and a freelance literary scholar. His translation work covers all literary genres and literature from different time periods. However, since the turn of the millennium the focus has been on contemporary Slovenian prose. In 1999 Köstler received, among others, the Austrian State Prize for Literary Translators Translatio. In 2020 he was the recipient of the Fabjan Hafner Prize and in 2024 he was awarded Slovenia’s Medal for Merit.

Flogerta Krypi was born on 14 July 1993 in Tirana, Albania. She has a degree in finance and accounting and has been practising her profession for years. She has been interested in literature since her early childhood. Flogerta is one of the new young voices of Albanian literature. She has taken part in various national and international competitions and won several prizes. In 2025, her novel Achtundzwanzig mathematisch perfekte Herzschläge was published in German translation.

Meral Kureyshi, born 1983 in Prizren in the former Yugoslavia, arrived in Bern in 1992. After completing her studies at the Swiss Institute for Literature in Biel she founded the Poetry Atelier of Bern. Her debut novel, Elefanten im Garten, was published in 2015 and shortlisted for the Swiss Book Prize. In 2025 she published Im Meer waren wir nie.

Als langjährige Aktivistin für Menschenwürde glaubt Lejla an Solidarität, menschliches Potenzial, aktive lokale Gemeinschaften, gemeinsame Initiativen und das Gute im Menschen. Lejla arbeitet unermüdlich für die gute Sache, hat starke Prinzipien und ist ständig bestrebt, mehr zu tun. Jetzt leitet sie das ACT-Kollektiv, das sich zum Ziel gesetzt hat, Projekte zu fördern, damit die Menschen in den westlichen Balkanländern in Harmonie miteinander und mit der Natur in lokalen Gemeinschaften leben können.

Sergei Lebedev is a Russian author whose books have been translated into 25 languages. He followed in his parents’ footsteps and took part in geological expeditions in the north of Russia and Central Asia at a young age. The destinations were mostly abandoned gulag areas whose camps had been uninhabited since they were closed in the 1960s. Since 2010, Lebedev has written six novels and a collection of short stories about the hidden Soviet past and the impact of Stalinist repression on modern Russian society. The Soviet trauma of totalitarianism is refracted through the perspective of a family history as if through a burning glass. Sergei Lebedev has been living in Potsdam since 2018.

Eric Marr is a freelance presenter and journalist. Born in Leipzig and a law graduate, he has worked for ZDF for more than 20 years, including as a presenter and reporter. You can find more information at: www.ericmarr.net

Born in 1980 in Murska Sobota/SLO, grew up in Ljubljana. Studied Comparative Literature in Ljubljana and Romance Studies in Vienna. Lives as a freelance author in the countryside between Vienna and Bratislava and writes short stories, novels and poems in German and Slovenian. “Der Kreis des Weberknechts” (2019, 3rd ed.) is her debut novel. She is the recipient of the Exil-Literaturpreis “schreiben zwischen den kulturen” 2008, the “Kritiško sito” for the best book of the year in Slovenia 2022, and the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize 2022.

Clemens Meyer, born in 1977 in Halle / Saale, lives in Leipzig. His debut novel Als wir träumten was published in 2006. Clemens Meyer has received numerous accolades for his work, including the Leipzig Book Fair Prize. His novel Die Projektoren was awarded the Bavarian Book Prize 2024 and was shortlisted for the German Book Prize 2024. Clemens Meyer received the Lessing Prize 2025 from the Free State of Saxony for his literary accomplishments.

Bojana Novaković is an award-winning actress, organiser, and researcher. As the coordinator of the Marš sa Drine campaign in Serbia, she leads efforts against the controversial Rio Tinto mining project. In 2022, she received the Serbian Green Leaf environmental award and in 2023 she served as a research associate at Boston University’s Institute for Global Sustainability, where she co-authored studies examining the development of solar energy in the American West. Her research delves into the connections between the green transition, colonialism, and issues of state and corporate corruption. An accomplished actress, Bojana has received an Australian Academy Film and TV Award and is currently directing the documentary The Forbidden Aunt.

Senad Pećanin is an attorney, journalist and editor based in Sarajevo. He is one of the founders of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and does research in the field of Human Rights and democratisation in Southeast Europe. In 1992, during the siege of Sarajevo, he founded the independent weekly magazine Dani.

Vivian Perkovic, born 1978 in Winterberg, is a German journalist and television presenter. She studied German language and literature with a focus on media and theatre and South Slavic studies at the University of Hamburg. She currently works for 3sat Kulturzeit.

Jörg Plath, born in 1960, is literary editor of “Deutschlandfunk Kultur” and writes for the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” and the “Neue Zürcher Zeitung”. He has been an editor, ghostwriter, and jury member (German Book Prize, International Literature Prize). He is currently on the jury of Weltempfänger.

Edo Popović, born in 1957, lives in Zagreb. He co-founded one of the most influential underground literary magazines in the former Yugoslavia and his first novel Ponoćni boogie became a cult classic of his generation. From 1991-1995, Edo Popović was one of Croatia’s best-known war correspondents. After the war he published several novels and short story collections. Edo Popović is considered Croatia’s voice of social transformation after the fall of communism. Several of his novels are translated into German.

Nadija Rebronja (1982) is a writer and literary scholar. She has published two volumes of poetry (Ples morima, 2008; Flamenko utopija, 2014). The shorty story volume 88 is her first prose publication. Rebronja’s work has been translated into several languages. She has lived and worked in Novi Pazar, Novi Sad, Belgrade, Sarajevo, Granada, Vienna, Istanbul and Buenos Aires.

Blerina Rogova Gaxha was born in Kosovo in 1982. She is a poet, essayist, and literary scholar. She holds a PhD in Philological Sciences and has served as an Associate Professor at the University of Gjakova. In 2024, she was appointed Director General of the National Library of Kosovo „Pjetër Bogdani“. Her awards include the Vilenica Award (Slovenia, 2015) and the National Prize for the best work of poetry (2010, 2020). She is the author of numerous research articles published in national and international journals. Several of her poems have been translated into German and have appeared in Wespennest, Lichtungen, Beton and the well-received anthology Grand Tour (Hanser 2019).

Stefan Rössel, born in Rudolstadt/Thuringia in 1972, has been Commissioner for Foreign Cultural Policy at the Federal Foreign Office since 2022. He studied law in Hamburg and Aix-en-Provence, completed his legal clerkship in Hamburg, Berlin and Accra/Ghana and earned an LL.M. in European competition law in Florence. In 2002, he joined the German Federal Foreign Office and has since worked at the Embassy in Algiers and the Permanent Mission in New York, among others. From 2018 to 2022, he worked – most recently as Deputy Head – in the Office of the Minister and in the management staff of the Federal Foreign Office.

Faruk Šehić was born in 1970 in Bihać. Until the outbreak of war in 1992, Šehić studied Veterinary Medicine in Zagreb. After the war he studied literature. His debut novel Knjiga o Uni (German translation Elvira Veselinović, Voland & Quist) was awarded the Meša Selimović prize for the best novel published in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Croatia in 2011, and the European Union Prize for Literature 2013.  Also available in German are his poetry collections Abzeichen aus Fleisch (tr. Hana Stojić, Edition Korrespondezen) and Meine Flüsse (tr. Rebekka Zeinzinger, parasitenpresse) and the short story collection Uhrwerkgeschichten (tr. Elvira Veselinović, Mimesis Verlag).

Alexander Sitzmann was born in Stuttgart in 1974. He studied Scandinavian and Slavic Studies in Vienna and now teaches and does research at the university there. Since 1999 he has been working as a freelance literary translator from Bulgarian, Macedonian and the Scandinavian languages. Sitzmann is editor of several anthologies, volumes, and special journal issues focussed on specific themes. He is the recipient of the 2004 Honorary Prize of the Bulgarian Ministry of Culture, the 2016 Austrian State Prize for Literary Translation, and the 2020 Brücke Berlin Theatre Award.

Tamara Štajner was born in Novo mesto, Slovenia, in 1987. She moved to Vienna at the age of nineteen and completed her master’s degree in viola performance at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. Her first volume of poetry, Schlupflöcher, was published in 2022, followed by Raupenfell, her first novel, in 2023. In 2024, she was invited by Brigitte Schwens-Harrant to read at the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize and won the Kelag Prize with her text Luft nach unten. She lives and works in Vienna.

Moni Stănilă, born in 1978 in Tomești, Romania, studied Orthodox theology in Timișoara and Sibiu. Her publications include (in Romanian) the poetry collections Ours from Ours (2020) and Offside (2022) as well as the novels The War of the Solomonars (2018), Brâncuși or How the Turtle Learned to Fly (2019) and Scream as Much as You Can (2020). Her poems have been translated into numerous languages. She lives in Chișinău, the capital of the Republic of Moldova.

Livia Ștefan, born in Giurgiu in 1982, is a Romanian poet. Her debut volume re.volver was published in 2012. Further volumes of poetry followed, including Lolita 32 (2016). She occasionally works as a photographer (exhibition re.volver 2012 as part of Wood be Nice) and performer. Her poems and photographs have appeared in various magazines. Ştefan has translated poems by Mia Axelsson, Ai Ogawa, Maya Angelou, Carolyn Forché, Sonia Sanchez, Jean-Michel Espitallier, Dambudzo Marechera into Romanian for the literary magazines Poesis International and Tomis. Her poems have been translated into several languages, in German with parasitenpresse.

Hana Stojić, born in Sarajevo in 1982, studied Translation Studies at Vienna University and works as a translator and cultural mediator. For her first translation into Bosnian, Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Liebhaberinnen, she received a translation prize awarded by the Austrian Federal Chancellery. Since 2008, she was working for Traduki, helming the project from 2014 till the end of 2021.

Tanja Stupar-Trifunović was born in Zadar in 1977 and is a graduate of the University of Banja Luka. Stupar-Trifunović lives in Banja Luka and works as the Editor of Putevi, a literary magazine. For her debut novel Satovi u majčinoj sobi (Die Uhren in Mutters Zimmer) she was awarded the EU Prize for Literature in 2016. The novel was also nominated for the prestigious NIN Award.

Taina Tervonen, born in Finland in 1973 and raised in Senegal, lives in Paris. She has been a freelance journalist for French and Finnish media for over twenty years and also works as a translator, documentary filmmaker and writer. ‘Die Reparatur der Lebenden’ was awarded the Jan Michalski Literature Prize in 2022 and will be published in German by Zsolnay in March 2025.

Annemarie Türk, born in 1953 in Klagenfurt, studied history, political science and Slovenian language as well as cultural management and sponsoring. From 1992 to 2013, she was head of cultural promotion and sponsorship at KulturKontakt Austria and was responsible for cultural cooperation with and in 15 countries in Eastern and Southeast Europe. Since April 2013 she has been working as a freelance curator and lecturer for various educational institutions, cultural organisations and universities.

Valerius has been a bookseller in Trier for 15 years, currently in an indie bookshop. Before that he was for many years the manager of the university bookshop. Florian Valerius, born in 1982, is also one of the most successful German-language bookstagrammers. Under @literarischernerd, he presents two to three new novels and illustrated books per week and shares with his online community of well over 25,000 followers his experiences as a reader and bookseller. In addition, he regularly holds live talks with people from the book industry.

Emanuil A. Vidinski is a Bulgarian writer, poet, publisher and musician. As a musician, Vidinski was a member of the ethno-rock band Gologan and is the singer and guitarist for the band Par Avion, which he founded. The Bulgarian-German poetry collection Par Avion with poems by Emanuil A. Vidinski was translated into German by Petya Lund and published by eta Verlag in Berlin (2017).

Vladimir Vojinović, born in Nikšić in 1978, has published four novels and a collection of short stories. He completed his doctorate on Montenegrin literature at the Faculty of Philosophy in Nikšić. Under his leadership, the first joint appearances of Montenegrin publishers took place at the book fairs in Leipzig and Frankfurt. Vojinović is a professor at the Faculty of Montenegrin Language and Literature in Cetinje, a member of the Montenegrin PEN Centre and president of the Society of Montenegrin Publishers, as well as editor-in-chief and publisher of the magazine and publishing house Fokalizator.

Ernest Wichner, born in Guttenbrunn (Banat, Romania) in 1952, has lived in Germany since 1975. He was Director of the Literaturhaus Berlin from 2003-2017. He is the author of poems and short stories as well as a translator, mainly from Romanian. His translations include works by Norman Manea, Ana Blandiana, Nora Iuga and Varujan Vosganian. In 2020, he was honoured with the Johann Heinrich Voß Prize, awarded by the German Academy for Language and Literature, for his services to Romanian literature. In 2024, his translation of Mircea Cărtărescu’s novel Theodoros was published by Zsolnay Verlag.