born in Moscow in 1967, is a Russian-American journalist and author. In 1981 she moved to the USA with her family, returned to Moscow in 1991, and was forced to leave again in 2013 due to her active involvement in the LGBT movement. Gessen has written biographies on Vladimir Putin,
Yoko Tawada was born in Tokyo in 1960. She wrote her first novel, which she also photocopied and distributed, when she was 12. She studied literature with a major in Russian literature, and from 1982 studied modern German literature in Hamburg. She completed her doctoral thesis on »Toys and Linguistic
Yasmina Reza was born to a Jewish-Iranian family in Paris in 1959. Reza’s mother was a violinist and music played an important role for the family. After studying drama at the University of Paris–Nanterre and the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq, Reza went on to act on stage across
Xiaolu Guo was born in 1973 and grew up in southern China. She studied at the Film Academy of Beijing and the National Film and Television School in London. As a prizewinning, but censorship-restricted writer of screenplays, she initially published several acclaimed and widely translated novels. In 2002, Guo moved
The Ghanaian-American writer Yaa Gyasi was born in 1989 in Mampong, a small town in the Ashanti region that functioned as the residence of the Kings of Ashanti in tandem with the city of Kumasi. Her family moved to the US in 1991 after Gyasi’s father received his doctorate from
born in Maryland in 1957, studied Biology at the technical university of Hanover. Completed his diploma in Botany in 1985 and achieved his doctorate at the Max-Planck-Institute in Cologne in 1988. One year later, Martin moved to Braunschweig, where he worked at the institute for genetics and conducted research on
Volker Sielaff was born in 1966 in Großröhrsdorf (Lausitz). Since 1990 he has published poetry, essays and reviews in literary magazines, anthologies and daily newspapers, including »manuskripte«, »Diwan«, »Sprache im technischen Zeitalter« and »Der Tagesspiegel«. His poetry has been translated into English, French, Italian, Danish, Czech, Polish, Hungarian and Arabic.
Viktor Yerofeyev was born in Moscow in 1947. His father was an interpreter for Vyacheslav Molotov, among others, and was also the Soviet ambassador in France. Yerofeyev studied philology and linguistics at Lomonsov University in Moscow and received his doctorate on Dostoyevsky and French existentialism. In 1979, he collaborated on
Veronika Dintinjana, born in 1977, was selected as »Best Young Author« at the Festival of Young Literature, Urška, Slovenia, in 2002. Since then her poems have been published in »Banipal«, »Stony Thursday«, »Wyspa« and various other magazines. In 2008 she won the Maribor Poetry Tournament, the 6th Ljubljana Poetry Slam,
Vicente Valero was born on the Spanish island of Ibiza in 1963 and first became well-known in his homeland as a poet. Since 1987, he has published seven volumes of poetry as well as several illustrated editions in cooperation with artists such as Vicente Fernández Cervera, Pedro Asensio and José
V. V. Ganeshananthan grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, and graduated from Harvard College, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and the M.A. program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where she specialized in arts and culture journalism. She writes short stories, essays, poems, and novels. She is the author of »Love
