Abdulrazak Gurnah was born in Zanzibar [now Tanzania] in 1948. He went to Great Britain at the age of eighteen after the Zanzibar Revolution in 1964. He first studied at Christ Church College in Canterbury and then at the University of Kent, where he earned his doctorate in 1982 with
Nasrin Siegewas born in Iran in 1950 and came to Germany when she was nine years old. She grew up in Hamburg and Flensburg, studied Psychology and Pedagogics in Kiel and worked as a psychotherapist in a hospital for drug addicts in Friedrichdorf, Taunus. Since 1983 Nasrin Siege has lived
John Kilaka was born in a village in southwest Tanzania in 1966. As a child he accompanied his father who was out working in the field, fishing and hunting. However, painting was his passion. At school he annoyed his teachers by distracting his fellow students from their lessons by drawing
Hermann Schulz, writer, traveller and publisher, was born in Nkalinzi, Tanzania in 1938 to a German missionary and grew up in the Wendland and the Lower Rhine regions of Germany. After training as a bookseller, Schulz initially worked in mining before travelling through more than sixty countries in Africa, Asia,
Bohdan Blahovec describes himself as a coincidental victim of poetry slams. He has already won the Czech National Championship, it being the first competition he took part in. Since then he has been seen as a pioneer, largely thanks to his completely improvised performance at the Czech Masters in 2005.
