Rofel G. Brion was born in 1953 in San Pablo, in the Philippines. Although his mother tongue is the local Filipino, he began to write in English, the language of his early education, at 12 years of age. It was only as a young adult that he started to consider
born in Berlin in 1953, is a writer and visual artist. He studied philosophy and sociology at the FU Berlin and first worked as a journalist, later also in the fields of advertising, PR, and design. His artistic focus is on the disciplines of painting, sculpture, and photography. He made
Robert R. Amsterdam was born in 1956. He studied Law in Ontario and has been a practicing lawyer since 1980. His areas of expertise are litigation and arbitrating disputes in emerging markets, as well as human rights issues and the legal consequences of expropriation in Latin America and Africa. He
Robert Hass was born in San Francisco in 1941 and studied Literature at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California and at Stanford University, where he completed his doctoral studies in 1971. After intermittently considering a career as a politician or novelist, he decided in favour of poetry, a decision influenced
Richard Wagner was born Lowrin, in the Banat region, in 1952. He studied Romanian and German language and literature in Temeswar and worked as a German teacher and later as a journalist, in Transylvania – for the weekly »Karpatenrundschau« among others. He was a founding member of the »Aktionsgruppe Banat«,
Rebecca Solnit was born in California in 1961. The essayist and historian worked as a museum researcher and editor and since 1988 has been a freelance writer. In her essays she traces thematic junctions in art and cultural history and establishes detailed parallels with the direct present and contemporary political
The poet and journalist Raúl Rivero Castañeda was born near Camagüey, Cuba, in 1945. He was among the first alumnae to graduate from the Faculty of Journalism there. In 1969 his first volume of poetry, »Papel de hombre« (t: The role of man), appeared, for which he was awarded a
Rashid al-Da’if was born in 1945 in Ehden, Lebanon. Despite the modest conditions of his upbringing, he attended school, studied Arabic Literature at the Lebanese University, and completed two doctorates at Paris. Al-Daif is considered a compelling chronicler of the transformations in Lebanon and an innovative representative of the Arabic
Raf S. Schakirow was one of the co-founders of the first Russian economic newspaper, ‘Komersant’, where he held several leading positions until 1997, when its publisher was replaced. Shakirov was the founder of the award-winning weekly newspaper for private investors, ‘Dengi’, and directed the large newspaper publishing company ‘Gazeta’. In
Rae Armantrout was born in 1947 in Vallejo near San Francisco. While she was studying in Berkeley and San Francisco she was very active on the literary scene from which the group of “Language Poets” emerged. She participated in the establishment of many different cultural projects in the California Bay
Philip Jeyaretnam was born in Singapore in 1964. He is the son of the former leader of the opposition Workers’ Party in Singapore, J.B. Jeyaretnam, and his English wife. Jeyaretnam read Law at Cambridge University and graduated with First Class Honours. He has been a practising advocate since 1988. Jeyaretnam’s
Petr Král was born in 1941 in a suburb of Prague. He began his studies with film, and joined the circle of post-surrealist artists around Vratislav Effenberger. After the invasion of Russian troops in 1968 he fled to Paris. Like Beckett, Ionesco, Kundera, and many other intellectuals, who in the
