Peter Schneider was born in Lübeck in 1940 and grew up in Freiburg, where he began his studies in German language, history and philosophy. He completed his education in Berlin. He wrote speeches for SPD politicians during the Bundestag election campaign in 1965. Schneider quickly found a role as one
Peter Sís , illustrator, author and filmmaker, was born in the Czech city of Brno in 1949 and is counted among the truly great representatives of international picture book art. He studied at Prague’s Academy of Applied Arts and at the Royal College in London. In 1982 a film commission
Peter Stamm was born in 1963 in Weinfelden, in the Swiss canton of Thurgau. He did a business apprenticeship and studied English, Information Technology, Psychology and Psychopathology for a while. Later he worked as a journalist, writing, among other things, for the »Neue Zürcher Zeitung« and the »Weltwoche«, as well
Paulo Teixeira was born in Lourenço Marques – today Maputo, the capital of Mozambique – in 1962. He studied Geography and Regional Planning at the New University in Lisbon, and since 1997 has been an editor at »Relãmpago«, a literary journal, as well as board member of the Luís Miguel
Paul Maar was born in Schweinfurt in 1937 and spent his childhood in rural Lower Franconia. After studying Painting and Art History in Stuttgart he worked as an independent painter, set designer, theatre photographer and art teacher. He has been a writer and freelance illustrator since 1976. The storyteller and
Oskar Pastior was born in Sibiu in the Transylvanian region of Romania in 1927. A member of the minority ethnic German community, he spent five years in a Soviet forced-labour camp after the Second World War before being allowed to return home. From 1955 he studied German Language and Literature
Norman M. Klein was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1945. He began his academic career with stops along the way at the University of California, Los Angeles, Otis College, Southern California Institute of Architecture and the University of Southern California. A historian in the fields of architecture, media, and
Norman Manea was born in Suceava, Bukovina, Romania, in 1936. As a child he was deported to a Transnistrian concentration camp in the Ukraine and he returned to Romania with surviving members of his family in 1945. Manea studied in Bucharest and worked as a hydraulic engineer. He published his
Nathaniel Mackey was born in Miami, Florida in 1947. He was raised in California, studied at Princeton University and completed his doctorate at Stanford University. There he was a co-editor of the first issue of the literature magazine ‘Hambone’, the title of which refers to a syncopated form of rock’n’roll
Namita Gokhale (née Pant) was born in Lucknow, India in 1956 and grew up between New Delhi and Nainital, in the foothills of the Himalayas. Together with her husband Rajiv Gokhale she published the Mumbai-based film magazine »Super« in the late seventies. Gokhale’s debut novel, »Paro: Dreams of Passion« (1984)
Miral al-Tahawi was born in 1968 in Gazirat Sa’du, Egypt. Her parents are members of a Bedouin tribe and belong to the society’s elite. Al-Tahawi studied Arabic Language and Literature and worked as a teachers’ representative at the University of Cairo. She was involved with an Islamist Brotherhood, from which
Mihran Dabag was born in 1944, studied Philosophy, History, Sociology and Political Science in Bonn and Bochum. He is Director of the Institute for the Research in Diaspora and Genocide at the Ruhr-Universität in Bochum and co-editor of numerous books about globalisation, violence, genocide and colonialism, as well as the
