Between the Lines
In Between Times

Barbara K. Anderlič

Barbara Anderlič, born in Ljubljana in 1984, has a degree in translation studies. In 2014, she received the exil-DramatikerInnenpreis of the Wiener Wortstaetten for her play Von Schablonen und Romanfiguren. In 2015, she won the ITI Global Playwriting Contest with A Continental Divide. Her translation of Samira Kentrić’s Balkanalien: Erwachsenwerden in Zeiten des Umbruchs was published by Jacoby & Stuart in 2021, followed by Jurij Devetak’s graphic novel Nekropolis (Schaltzeit Verlag), based on Boris Pahor’s novel of the same name, in 2023. As an interpreter, Anderlič has had the privilege of lending her voice to Graciela Iturbide and Mojca Kumerdej, among others. In 2012, she was a member of the Standard audience jury at the Viennale film festival in Austria.

Shkëlzen Rexha

Ag Apolloni

Ag Apolloni, born in Kaçanik, Kosovo, in 1982, is a Kosovar writer, poet, playwright and essayist. He writes in Albanian. Apolloni is a professor of literature at the University of Prishtina. His literary publications are characterised by dramatic and philosophical dimensions; they reflect his critical attitude towards history, politics and society.

Stephan Boltz

Lindita Arapi

Lindita Arapi, born in Albania, belongs to the circle of the so-called Albanian literary avant-garde. She publishes poetry collections, novels, essays and journalistic pieces. Her first novel, Schlüsselmädchen, was awarded the Book of the Year Award by Kult Academy in Albania and translated into German. Her most recent novel, Die Eingemauerte, is currently being translated into German and is forthcoming in Weidle Verlag. In addition to her writing, Lindita Arapi works as a freelance radio editor for Deutsche Welle (Bonn) and translator.

Esad Babačić

Esad Babačić, writer and the singer of the legendary punk band Via ofenziva, is one of the best-known and most original representative of the Slovenian literary scene. He is author of numerous books and poems, for which he received many awards. In 2003, he received the Hörbiger Prize in Austria for his poem Donava. Translations of his text have been published in all major European languages, among others in the magazines Die Batterie, Literatur und Kritik and Edinburgh Review.

Radmila Vankoska

Lana Bastašić

Lana Bastašić, born in 1986 in Zagreb, Croatia, to Serbian parents, grew up in Bosnia after the break-up of Yugoslavia and most recently lived for many years in Barcelona. With her debut novel “Catch the Rabbit” she was shortlisted for the NIN Award, Serbia’s most prestigious literary prize, and in 2020 she received the European Union Prize for Literature for the novel.

Agata Szymanska-Medina

Elona Beqiraj

Elona Beqiraj lives and works in Berlin. She gives workshops on right-wing violence in Germany and has led the art project “Weil wir nicht vergessen” (Because we won’t forget) at the Maxim Gorki Theatre, which is dedicated to a dignified culture of remembrance. In her book of poetry “und wir kamen jeden sommer”, published by Resonar Verlag in 2019, she addresses the question of belonging and not belonging in Germany. In addition, she gives writing workshops that are exploring these topics.

Ralf Beste

Ralf Beste, born in 1966 in Witten, studied history in Bochum, Bielefeld and Baltimore (Master of Arts, Johns Hopkins University; Magister Artium, University of Bielefeld). From 2001 to 2014 editor of SPIEGEL. 2014 to 2016 Deputy Head of the Planning Staff at the Federal Foreign Office; from 2016 to 2017 Commissioner for Strategic Communication and from 2017 to 2019 Head of the Planning Staff at the Federal Foreign Office. From 2019 to the beginning of 2022, Ralf Beste was Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Republic of Austria. He is Head of the Department for Culture and Communication at the Federal Foreign Office.

Martina Bitunjac

Martina Bitunjac is a historian and research associate at the Moses Mendelssohn Centre for European-Jewish Studies. She teaches at the Institute of History at the University of Potsdam and is also managing editor of the Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte. Her research interests include the Second World War and the Holocaust in Southeast Europe, perpetrator research, remembrance culture and Jewish history in the Balkans.

Cătălina Flămânzeanu

Mircea Cărtărescu

Mircea Cărtărescu was born in Bucharest in 1956. Numerous stays abroad followed, including in Berlin, Stuttgart, Vienna, 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 Solenoid (2019) and Melancolia (2022). In 2022 he was awarded the FIL Prize for Romance Languages. He lives and works in Bucharest.

Ekko von Schwichow

Antje Contius

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.

IGUE

Jacqueline Csuss

Jacqueline Csuss has been working as a translator of literature, autobiographies and non-fiction as well as texts for international organisations (from English, Spanish and French) since the 1990s. Her translation of US author Watt Key’s Alabama Moon was nominated for the German Youth Book Award 2010. In 2010, she was awarded the Art Prize of the Republic of Austria. She is a board member of the Interest Group of Literary Translators in Austria and lives in Vienna.

Matej Povše

Miljana Cunta

Miljana Cunta is a poet, translator and cultural manager. She has been the director of the Vilenica and Fabula literary festivals, a guest columnist for the daily newspaper Delo and a mentor for creative writing workshops for disadvantaged marginalised groups. She translates from English and Italian and is the author of three books of poetry. Her poems are available in numerous languages.

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Mascha Dabić

Born in Sarajevo in 1981, studied translation studies (English and Russian), translates literature from the Balkan region. She lives in Vienna and has worked as a journalist on the phenomenon of migration (daStandard.at). She works as an interpreter in the field of asylum and conferences and teaches at the University of Vienna. Her debut novel Reibungsverluste was shortlisted for the Austrian Book Prize 2017; in 2018 she received the Literature Promotion Prize of the City of Vienna.

Aleksandar Denić

Bojana Denić

Bojana Denić, born in Belgrade/Yugoslavia in 1974, studied German language and literature at the University of Belgrade. To date, she has translated more than fifty titles of German-language literature, including works by: Clemens Meyer, Wolfgang Hilbig, Anna Seghers, Uwe Johnson, Christa Wolf, Peter Handke, Elfriede Jelinek Thomas Bernhard, Wolfram Lotz and Heiner Müller. Some of the books were published in the small publishing house Radni sto, founded by Bojana Denić in 2017. The publishing house is oriented towards the aesthetic landscape of ‘literature without a country’. She is currently working on translations of Thomas Brasch and Brigitte Reimann.

Leonhard Pill

Marko Dinić

Born in Vienna in 1988, is a Serbian author who lives in Austria and publishes in German. Dinić grew up in Belgrade, moved to Austria in 2008 and studied German language and literature and Jewish cultural history in Salzburg. In 2012 he published poetry and prose for the first time in anthologies and journals. He has been the guest of many residencies, including in Brno/CZ, Paliano/IT and Chretzturm/CH and Stadtschreiber in Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm/D, Schwaz/Tyrol and Halle/D. In 2012, his first volume of poetry Namen: Pfade: (Edition Tandem) got published, followed in 2019 with his first novel “Die guten Tage” (Zsolnay).

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Vedran Džihić

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.

Elena Siretanu

Paula Erizanu

Paula Erizanu (1992) is a Moldavian journalist and writer. Studied journalism at the City University of London and currently lives in Kishinev as a freelancer. Writes for BBC, The Guardian, Financial Times and other political and literature magazines in Romania and Moldova. She has also written non fiction and literature books: „Aceasta este prima mea revoluție. Furați-mi-o!” / „This is my first revolution. Steal it from me!” ( Cartier, 2011), „Ard pădurile” / „Forests are burning”(Cartier, 2021).

Zuzana Finger

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.

Marko Todorov

Will Firth

Will Firth was born in Newcastle, Australia, in 1965. His focus as a literary translator is on prose from the Serbo-Croatian language and North Macedonia. He studied German and Russian in Canberra, with Serbo-Croatian as a minor subject. From 1988-89 he immersed himself in South Slavic studies in Zagreb, then spent a postgraduate year in Moscow. He has lived in Berlin since 1991 and works as a freelance translator of literary and humanities texts. In 2005-08 he translated for the UN War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Firth is a member of the VdÜ (Germany) and Translators Association (UK).

Maja Gebhardt

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.

Ognyan Georgiev

Ognyan Georgiev is a long-time reporter and editor of the leading Bulgarian business publication Capital. Currently he is heading Kapital Insights, an English language service and the brand new Plovdiv office, a regional division of Capital in Bulgaria’s second biggest city. Georgiev is a Robert Bosch Stiftung and Fulbright alumni, and spent a year in MIT, researching urban migration. He is the author of “The Grand Return: COVID-19 and Reverse Migration to Bulgaria”, a report produced in partnership with the European Council of Foreign Relations, as well as the follow-up report on the same topic for Bulgaria and Romania, produced in cooperation with the Joint Research Center of the European Commission.

Rosie Goldsmith

Rosie Goldsmith is an award-winning journalist specialising in arts and foreign affairs. Today she combines journalism with chairing and curating literary events and festivals. She is founder and director of the European Literature Network and created The Riveter magazine.

Svetla Stoyanova

Georgi Gospodinov

Georgi Gospodinov (1968) is a leading Bulgarian writer, the author of Natural Novel and The Physics of Sorrow, among many other books. He is winner of the Central European Angelus Award (2019), the Jan Michalski Prize (2016) and many other accolades. Recently, Gospodinov was awarded the Usedom Prize (Germany, 2021) for contribution to the European literature by a jury presided by Olga Tokarczuk. His latest novel, Time Shelter (Zeitzuflucht), was published in the spring of 2020 during the first lockdown and is forthcoming in more than fifteen countries, among them Germany (Aufbau), France (Gallimard), US (Liveright/Norton). In 2021, Time Shelter won the prestigious Italian award Premio Strega Europeo.

Andrea Grill

Andrea Grill was born in Bad Ischl and studied in Salzburg, among other places. She did her PhD at the University of Amsterdam on the evolution of endemic butterflies in Sardinia. Grill writes poetry, stories and novels and translates from Albanian and Dutch. Her translations include the novel Milchkuss by Mimoza Ahmeti, the poetry collection Kinder der Natur by Luljeta Lleshanaku and Der Schlaf des Oktopus by Ervina Halili. As an author, her work include Das Paradies des Doktor Caspari (2015), Cherubino (2019) and most recently Bio-Diversi-Was? Reise in die fantastische Welt der Artenvielfalt and Seepferdchen, both published in 2023.

Radanko Vadanjel

Tatjana Gromača

Tatjana Gromača was born in 1971 in Sisak, and lives in central Istria near Pula. She studied comparative literature and philosophy in Zagreb (graduated in 1995) and had been a long-time contributor for the legendary, recently closed down Croatian weekly Feral Tribune, writing literary reportages, book reviews, and articles. Since 2008, she has been a cultural columnist and reporter at the daily newspaper Novi list and has been writing poetry, prose and essays. She received several prizes for her work, among others a grant of the Academy of Arts Berlin.

Elisabeth Novy

Günter Kaindlstorfer

Günter Kaindlstorfer, born in Bad Ischl in 1963, is an Austrian literary critic, TV moderator, writer, and journalist.

Samira Kentrić

Samira Kentrić (1976) is an artist who transfers the social reality of her time into images. She enjoys creating surreal situations to highlight what she believes is the most real. She works in various techniques, as many as she finds appropriate. Her main interest lies in the area where public and political expressions meet with the intimate aspects of people’s every-day. She wants her work to communicate themes that lack reflection and are therefore often awkward and hidden. She has published three graphic novels Balkanalije (autobiography) in 2015, Pismo Adni (a visual and literary commentary about the refugee situation) in 2016 and Adna in 2020.

Olja Knežević

Olja Knežević was born in Podgorica, Montenegro. In 2008, she completed her M. A. in Creative Writing at Birkbeck College in London and received the Overall Prize for the best thesis, which later became her first novel Milena & Other Social Reforms. In 2013 she published a volume of autobiographical short stories: London & Stories of the South. This was followed by another novel: Mrs Black (2015, 2nd edition 2021). Catherine the Great and the Little (2019) is her first book available in German translation. For the manuscript of the novel she received the prestigious V.B.Z. Literature Prize for the best unpublished novel in Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian.

Robert Stürzl

Anne König

Anne König is a publisher and author living in Leipzig. She founded the publishing house Spector Books with Markus Dreßen and Jan Wenzel in 2001. In 2019, she published Bruchlinien. Drei Episoden zum NSU together with Nino Bulling and Jonas Mekas: I Seem to Live. The New York Diaries, 1950-2011 in two volumes. She is the editor of all books by Jonas Mekas in the Spector Books programme and has recently co-curated a retrospective in honour of the 100th birthday of the avant-garde filmmaker at the Arsenal in Berlin.

Mankica Kranjec

Jela Krečič

Jela Krečič, born in 1979, is a Slovenian journalist, columnist and philosopher. She is married to philosopher Slavoj Žižek. She writes for the largest national daily newspaper “Delo”, in which she published an exclusive interview with Julian Assange in 2013. She is co-editor of several anthologies on contemporary television series and on the German-American film director Ernst Lubitsch. Her literary debut Keine wie sie (Ni druge), published in 2015, was very successful in Slovenia. Her second novel, Knjiga drugih (Das Buch der anderen), was published in 2018.

Arian Leka

Arian Leka, born in 1966, studied Music in his place of birth, Durrës and Albanian Language and Literature in Tirana. He writes poems, short stories, novels and children’s literature and has translated the works of the Italian Nobel prize winners Eugenio Montale and Salvatore Quasimodo into Albanian. In 2004 he founded the International Poetry and Literature Festival, POETEKA, and since then has been the Chief Editor of the literary journal of the same name.

Marko Lipuš

Cvetka Lipuš

Cvetka Lipuš, born in 1966 in Eisenkappel/Železna Kapla, studied comparative literature and Slavic studies in Klagenfurt. From 1990 to 2000 she was co-editor of the cultural magazine Mladje alongside Maja Haderlap and Fabjan Hafner. From 1995 she lived and worked in the United States, where she studied library and information science at the University of Pittsburgh. She writes in Slovene and has published numerous volumes of poetry. For her literary work, she received the 2016 Prešeren Foundation Prize, the Austrian State Scholarship for Literature and the Carinthian State Prize for Literature.

Edi Matić

Tomislav Marković

Tomislav Marković, born in 1976, lives and works in Belgrade and is the author of poems, prose texts, and essays. His publications include Vreme smrti i razonode (Time of death and joy, 2009), the poetry collection Čovek zeva posle rata (A man yawns after the war, 2014) and book of satirical prose Velika Srbija za male ljude (Greater Serbia for little people, 2018). He writes columns for web portals Al Jazeera Balkans, Nomad.ba, AntenaM.net, Zurnal.info and Tacno.net. Some of his writing is available in Albanian, Slovene, English, German and Hungarian translation.

Una Rebic

Ana Marwan

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.

Meikel Mathias

Meikel Mathias

Meikel Mathias, born in 1985, grew up in Liechtenstein. He lives and works as a graduate designer, illustrator and comic artist in Berlin. His first book “Inshallah – Kurzgeschichten aus Marokko” (Inshallah – Short Stories from Morocco) was based on a research trip of several months and followed the concept of fictionalised everyday reportage. His latest graphic novel “Straßen & Idioten” (Streets & Idiots) remains true to this working principle and transports the reader to Russia in 2017, half a decade before the war of aggression on Ukraine.

Catalina Flaminzeanu

Ioana Nicolaie

Ioana Nicolaie was born in 1974 in Sângeorz-Băi, in the north of Romania. She studied literature at the University of Bucharest. Afterwards she worked as a teacher, journalist and for various publishing houses. Today she lives as a freelance author in Bucharest.

Robertino Nikolic

Vivian Perkovic

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.

Gezett

Jörg Plath

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.

Dora Held

Marko Pogačar

Marko Pogačar was born in 1984 in Split, Yugoslavia. He is holding MA’s both in theory of literature and history. He has published fifteen books of poetry, prose and essays, for which he received Croatian and international awards. In 2014, he edited the Young Croatian Poetry anthology, followed by The Edge of a Page: New Poetry in Croatia (2019). He was a fellow of, among others, Civitella Ranieri, Literarische Colloquium Berlin, Récollets-Paris, Passa Porta, Milo Dor, Krokodil Beograd, Landis & Gyr Stiftung, Lyrik Kabinett Munich and DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm fellowships. His books and texts have appeared in more than thirty languages.

Wolf-Dieter Grabner

Jelena Popržan

Jelena Popržan is a violist, singer, composer and performer living in Vienna. Born in 1981 in Novi Sad, studied viola in Belgrade, master’s degree at KUG/Oberschützen/Graz. In 2008 she founded her own ensembles such as Catch-Pop String-Strong (Austrian World Music Award 2011, among others), Sormeh and Madame Baheux (Austrian World Music Award 2014). Concert tours have taken her across Europe, to Peru, Mexico, Canada, Uzbekistan, the USA, Turkey, all the countries of the former Yugoslavia and all provinces of Austria. Her musical œuvre ranges from classical, world, jazz, political song, music cabaret, folk, rock, new music, and voice experimentation.

Janez Klenovšek

Uroš Prah

Uroš Prah, born in Maribor in 1988, has published three volumes of poetry: Čezse polzeči (2012), Tišima (2015 – nominated for the Veronika Prize as well as the Simon Jenko Prize) and Udor (2019). In 2018, he received the Exile Poetry Prize for his investigative poem Nostra Silva, written in German; most recently, the short story Die Fächer was published in Literatur und Kritik. Translations of his books, poems and essays have appeared in fifteen countries. He was co-founder and editor-in-chief of the literary magazine IDIOT, programme director of the international festival Literodrom and co-founder of the Museum of Madness, Trate. Uroš Prah currently lives in Vienna.

Lukas Beck

Doron Rabinovici

Doron Rabinovici, born in Tel Aviv in 1961, has lived in Vienna since 1964. He is a writer and historian. His work includes short stories, novels, essays and scholarly studies. In Austria, he repeatedly takes a prominent stand against racism, right-wing extremism and anti-Semitism. Rabinovici is a member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz. For his work he has been awarded, among others, the Anton Wildgans Prize and the Honorary Prize of the Austrian Book Trade for Tolerance in Thought and Action.

Dado Ljaljević

Jana Radičević

Jana Radičević, born 1997 in Podgorica, is a Montenegrin poet. She studied German language and literature at the University of Montenegro. She is an active member of the Young Writers Forum community. Partizanska knjiga published a book of poetry ako kažem može postati istina (if said, it can become the truth) (2019) and her long poem zona neutralnog pritiska (zone of neutral pressure) (2022). The latter has been translated into German under the title zone des neutralen druckes (Edition Thanhäuser, 2022). She was the youngest holder of the literature scholarship Writer of the City of Graz in 2020/21.

Dolia Rosa Imdorf

Nadya Radulova

Nadya Radulova, born 1975, is a Bulgarian poet, translator and editor. She studied linguistics and gender studies in Sofia and Budapest. She completed her doctorate on the topic of “Figures of Femininity in Literary Modernism” at Sofia University. She has received several awards both as a poet and as a translator from English.

Claudia Romeder

Claudia Romeder is head of the Residenz Verlag.

Maja Bosnić

Ivana Sajko

Ivana Sajko, born in Zagreb in 1975, is a writer, theatre director and performer working in the overlapping fields of literature, performing arts and music. The thematic focus of her texts lies often on female perspectives and an examination of recent Eastern European history. Her books in German translation include Rio bar (2008), Familienroman (2020), Jeder Aufbruch ist ein kleiner Tod (2022) and Liebesroman (2017), for which she received the International Literature Award of the HKW. She lives in Berlin with her son Yves and dog Puntino.

Mihai Neagu

Adrian Schiop

Adrian Schiop was born in Porumbacu de Jos (Sibiu County) in 1973 and studied psychology, education and linguistics in Cluj-Napoca. Having already attracted attention with his autofictional novels “pe bune/pe invers” (2004) and “Zero grade Kelvin” (2009), he made his definitive literary breakthrough in 2013 with his third novel “Soldații. Poveste din Ferentari”. Adrian Schiop is a freelance writer and journalist living in Bucharest. “Soldaten. Geschichte aus dem Ferentari” is his first novel in German translation.

Ema Friš

Faruk Šehić

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. The literary critics regard him as the voice of the so-called mangled generation. His debut novel Knjiga o Uni (2011; tr: Quiet Flows the Una) 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.  Selected poems, Abzeichen aus Fleisch (2011, Edition Korrespondezen) and short stories Uhrwerkgeschichten (2021, Mimesis Verlag) are translated into German.

Kushtrim Tërnava

Shpëtim Selmani

Shpëtim Selmani, born in 1986, is a writer and actor from Kosovo. His books include Libërthi i dashurisë (Notebook of Love), published by Armagedoni in Prishtina in 2019. He was awarded the EU Prize for Literature for the book in 2020. The German translation was published in 2021.

Alexander Sitzmann

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.

Dženat Dreković

Hana Stojić

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.

Christoph Thun-Hohenstein

Ambassador DDr. Christoph Thun-Hohenstein (born 1960) is Head of the Section for International Cultural Affairs at the Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs of the Republic of Austria. Thun-Hohenstein studied law as well as political science and art history at the University of Vienna. For the Ministry of Foreign Affairs he held posts in Abidjan, Geneva and Bonn. From 1999 to 2007 he was Director of the Austrian Cultural Forum New York. From 2007 to 2011 he was managing director of departure, the creative agency of the City of Vienna. From 2011 to 2021, Thun-Hohenstein headed the MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts as general director and scientific director. He initiated the Vienna Biennale for Change, which he directed from 2014 to 2022. Most recently, he initiated the Vienna Climate Biennale, which will take place for the first time from April to July 2024.

Nini Tschavoll

Annemarie Türk

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.

Žan Koprivnik

Anja Zag Golob

Anja Zag Golob, born in Slovenj Gradec in 1976, is co-founder and editor of the publishing house VigeVageKnjige and lives as an author, translator and publicist in Maribor. She has published four volumes of poetry in Slovenian so far. The first to appear in German translation was the volume “ab und zu neigungen” (hochroth Vienna, 2015) and the joint volume with Nikolai Vogel written in German: “Taubentext, Vogeltext” (hochroth Munich, 2018). “Anweisungen zum Atmen” (2018) was her first book publication with Edition Korrespondenzen.

Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, cultural theorist and public intellectual. He is international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, visiting professor at New York University and a senior researcher at the University of Ljubljana’s Department of Philosophy.