Herkunft: USA

Joshua Freeman

Joshua Freeman is a translator, cultural historian and specialist in Uyghur literature. His translation of Tahir Hamut Izgil’s memoirs was awarded the John Leonard Prize for Best First Book 2023.

Branwen Okpako, born in 1969 in Lagos, is an author and film director. She studied political science in England and directing at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (dffb). Her graduation film »Dreckfresser« (Eng. »Dirt for Dinner«) was released in 2000 and received the German Newcomer Award for Documentary

Peter Kuras

Peter Kuras was born in Traverse City in the US state of Michigan and has lived in Berlin as a freelance journalist since 2015. He holds a PhD in Germanic Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics from Princeton University and writes for »The Guardian«, »Die Welt«, and »Der Freitag«, among others. His

Chika Unigwe

Chika Unigwe was born and raised in Enugu, Nigeria in 1974. After completing her bachelor’s degree in English at the University of Nigeria, she moved to Belgium in 1995. Unigwe has published five novels, a collection of short stories and numerous texts in anthologies and literary magazines. Her second novel

Nnedi Okorafor

Nnedi Okorafor, born in Cincinnati in 1974 to Nigerian parents, is an author of prose for children and adults. She specializes in science fiction, fantasy, and magical realism with an Afrofuturist twist. She studied rhetoric and journalism and earned a PhD in literature from the University of Illinois. She has

Novuyo Rosa Tshuma

Novuyo Rosa Tshuma was born in Zimbabwe in 1988 and grew up there and in South Africa. She studied Creative Writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her first independent publication was »Shadows« (2013), a volume with a narrative and several short stories about everyday life in Zimbabwe and life as

Nora Krug

was born in Karlsruhe in 1977. She studied stage design in Liverpool, visual communication at the Berlin University of the Arts, and Illustration as Visual Essay at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York City. Krug is an associate professor of illustration at the Parsons School of Design

Mima Simić

The Croatian author of Yugoslav descent spent her youth writing short stories (Adventures of Gloria Scott) and her early thirties engaging in political activism and film criticism (Hollywood-proof), while also working as a radio and TV presenter (The Fifth Day, Croatian Radio-Television). Today, in what she considers the best years

Mary-Alice Daniel

Mary-Alice Daniel was born in 1986 in Maiduguri in Islamic northern Nigeria and grew up in the UK and the USA. She belongs to the Hausa-Fulani ethnic group and a Christian minority in Nigeria and holds both American and Nigerian citizenship. Daniel has a PhD in English Literature and Creative

Abdi Nazemian

Abdi Nazemian was born in Tehran in 1976 and grew up in Paris, Toronto, and New York, among other places. He studied English at Columbia University and Business Administration at the University of California Los Angeles. He is a screenwriter for films and TV series, a film producer, and an

Sabaa Tahir

was born in the Mojave Desert, California, into a family running an eighteen-room motel. Immersed in an environment of fantasy novels, comic books, and music, her affinity for literature took root early on. Her educational journey led her to a career as a newspaper editor where she worked night shifts,

Donna Barba Higuera

Donna Barba Higuera was born in 1969, in a small town in Central California. As a child, her interests lay in stories, often dialing the library’s dial-a-story service and fabricating her own eerie narratives inspired by an off-limits pioneer cemetery. This early fascination with storytelling, combined with her life experiences