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ARGENTINE

Hugo Mujica (1942, Buenos Aires) studied fine arts, philosophy, philosophical anthropology and theology. This range of studies is reflected in the variation of his works, that cover both philosophy and anthropology, but also the narrative and, above all, poetry.

Among his main books of essays: Origen y destino (1987), La palabra inicial (1995), Flecha en la niebla (1997), Poéticas del vacío (2002), Lo naciente (2007), La casa y otros ensayos (2008), La pasión según Georg Trakl (2009), El saber del no saberse (2014) and Dioniso. Eros creador y mística pagana” (2016).

Solemne y mesurado (1990) and Bajo toda la lluvia del mundo (2008) are his two short story collections. Some of his works have been translated in more than 10 languages.

His poetry, starting with 1983, has been published in Argentina, Spain, Mexico, Chile, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, France, Italy, Slovenia, United States, Romania, Portugal, Greece, Israel, England, Honduras and Bulgaria. In 2013-2014 Vaso Roto publishing house published Del crear y lo creado, 3 volumes containting almost his complete work of poetry and essays.

In 2013 he published Cuando todo calla that won the “XIII Premio Casa de América de Poesía Americana”, followed by Barro desnudo (2016), his most recent poetry book.

His life and trips are the main material for his texts: for instance, his existence as an artist in the Greenwich Village, during the 60s, or his seven years of monastic life within the Trappist Order when he also began to write.

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AUSTRIA

Max Höfler (1978, Graz, Austria) is an author, sound artist, curator and member of the artist association Forum Stadtpark and the international radio art collective radia. He edits the silver screen literature magazine GLORY HOLE – messages from the other side.  He studied German literature, philosophy and history of art, having a PhD degree in Post-Wittgensteinian aesthetics.

Max Höfler writes experimental texts, which are influenced by the avant-garde movements of the early 20^th century. For his books he was awarded several prizes and grants.

max.hoefler.mur.at, vimeo.com/channels/gloryhole, www.youtube.com/user/EigenheimgalerieGG44

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BRAZIL

Marco Lucchesi (1963, Rio de Janeiro) is a poet, novelist, essayist and translator. He studied history at the Universidade Federal Fluminense, and has a PhD in Literary Theory at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Marco Lucchesi is a professor of comparative literature at the same university. He writes regularly in the pages of The Globo newspaper. He is also a lecturer and visiting professor for many universities in Europe and Latin America.

Among his books, we mention: O Bibliotecário do Impedador (Prize Machado de Assis – UBE), Nove Cartas Sobre a Divina Comédia, O Dom do (Prize Machado de Assis, finalist of Prize São Paulo and second place in Prize Brasília), Meridiano Celeste & Bestiário (Prize Alphonsus de Guimarães), Sphera (honourable mention in Prize Jabuti), A Memória de Ulisses (Prize João Fagundes de Meneses), Ficções de um Gabinete Ocidental (Premio Ars Latina of Essay and Prize Origenes Lessa), Os olhos do Deserto, Poemas Reunidos and Teatro Alquímico (Award from the Academia Mineira de Letras). He published in Italian: Poesie (Premio Città di Torino, among others), Lucca Dentro (award from Camera di Commercio), Hyades and La Gioia del Dolor. He translated a collection of poems by Rumi, A Sombra do Amado, A Ciencia Nova  by Vico,  two novels by Umberto Eco, Baudolino and The Island of the Day Before, Presto con fuoco by Roberto Cotroneo, three stories by Patrick Süskind, and others. Among the translations of his works into more than ten languages, the translations into German, Romanian, Swedish, Persian, or Spanish stand out.

He was awarded the Prize Alceu Amoroso Lima, for lifetime achievement in poetry, Jabuti Prize, one of the most important prizes in Brazil, and Marin Sorescu prize, in Romania.

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BULGARIA

Gheorghi Konstantinov (1943, Bulgaria) is a graduate of Sofia University, with a degree in Bulgarian Philology. He worked for the literature department of Bulgarian TV, was chief editor of literary magazine Plamak and then director of the Plamak Publishing House. In 1990 Konstantinov became member of the Parliament in the fourth Great National Assembly and in 1997 general secretary of the Bulgarian Writers Union. In 2001 he became President of the Bulgarian P.E.N. International Center and now he is Honorary President.

Gheorghi Konstantinov wrote 30 books of poetry among which: A Smile is My Capital (1967), Personal Time (1974), Illiterate Heart (1978), A Sociable Lonely Man (1982), I Love You Up to Here (1992-2002, 13 editions), A Tree and A Bird (1999), Aspirin Snow (2001), My Recital (2003), 60 Pages of Poetry (2003), A Love Schedule (2005), Evening rainbow (2006), New Poems (2008), A Crow in the Snow (2011), Emotion in Konstantinopol (2013). His poems are included in anthologies of various languages: English, French, Russian, Japanese, German, Serbian, Macedonian, Turkish, Greek, Hindi, Flemish, Farsi, etc.

He has also published prose works for children. His comic novel Tuffo Red-Haired Pirate has been translated into French, Russian, German, Polish, Ukrainian, etc. Among many honours: The Bulgarian Writers’ Union Prize – the best poetry book (2012), National Prize for Poetry “Geo Milev” (2007), National Prize for Literature “Ivan Vazov”.

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CANADA

Christian Bök (Canada) is the author of Eunoia (Coach House Books, 2001) – a bestselling work of experimental literature, which has gone on to win the Griffin Poetry Prize. Bök is one of the earliest founders of Conceptualism (the poetic school of avant-garde writing made famous, in part, by the activities of Kenneth Goldsmith). Bök has created artificial languages for two television shows: Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict and Peter Benchley’s Amazon. Bök has earned many accolades for his virtuoso recitals of “sound-poems” (particularly Die Ursonate by Kurt Schwitters) and has performed lectures and readings in more than 200 venues around the world in the last four years. Bök is finishing his current project, entitled The Xenotext – a work that requires him to engineer the genome of an unkillable bacterium so that the DNA of such an organism might become not only a durable archive that stores a poem for eternity, but also an operant machine that writes a poem in response. Bök teaches at the School of Creative Arts and Humanities at Charles Darwin University in Darwin, Australia.

 

Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu is Professor of Comparative Literature, Critical Theory and Hispanic Studies at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, and a tetra-lingual writer (of academic writings spanning a number of disciplines, of prose, poetry, essay, children stories, etc.). His recent volumes include Happy New Fear! (Bucharest, 2011), Literary Theory and the Sciences (ed.; Neohelicon 41.2, 2014), and Matei Călinescu Festschrift (ed., Yearbook of Comparative Literature, 59, 2016). A few books are forthcoming, including Deunamor, Afka and Other Positions, An Astrocentric World, Policing Literary Theory (ed.), Poezoo şi One per Year (the last two being children’s books).

 

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CHINA

Gong Xuemin (1965, Sichuan) started to write poetry in the 80s. In the spring of 1995, he made a research along the route of Long March of Red Army, from Ruijin, Jiang Xi to Yanan, Shaan Xi and finally wrote the poem The Long March. He has published several poem selections such as: Illusion, Snow on Snowy Mountains, The Long March, Jiuzhaigou Blue, Purple Forbidden City, City of Steel. At present he is chief editor of Xingxing Poetry Magazine and vice-president of Sichuan Writers Association.

 

 

Hu Xian (1966 in Tong Shan County, Jiangsu Province, China) is a poet and deputy editor of Yangtze Poetry Journal.

He published the poem selections Shower (2010), Search for the Chinese Cultural Root (2015), and the prose selection Vegetables and Their Anecdotes (2008).

He is the recipient of the following titles: “Top Ten Young Poets of the New Century” by Poetry Periodical (2009), 2nd Biennial Top Ten Poems Award sponsored by Fragrant Grass (2010), Wen Yiduo Poetry Award (2011), The Yearly Poetry Prize sponsored by October (2012), “The First Reader” Best Chinese Poet Award (2012), The Yearly Top Ten Young Poets Award sponsored by Modern Youth Journal (2013), The Yearly Poetry Prize by Times Literature (2013), Rou Gang Poetry Award (2014) and The Yearly Poetry Prize sponsored by Poetry Periodical (2014).

Jidi Majia (1961, China) is an important poet of yi nationality who graduated în 1982 the Chinese Language Faculty of the South-West University of China. At present he is the vice-president and the party secretary of the Writers’ Union in China, the president of the Minority Writers’ Union in China and counselor for the Chinese Poets’ Society. He is the most famous poet representing the minorities in China, having achieved worldwide recognition as well. In China he published twenty poetry titles. His works have been translated into more than thirty languages and distributed into more than forty countries and territories. He was awarded many Chinese prizes, such as: for the volume First Love Song he got the medal of the 3^rd edition of New Poetry Festival in China; for Selfportrait and others he received the main prize of Literature and Poetry Festival of the national minorities; Twelve Poems was awarded the Literature prize of Sichuan province and the “Guo Moruo” literary medal. In 2016 he received several awards such as: “Mihail Sholohov” Medal from the Rusian Writers’ Union, the medal for special merits in poetry from the Bulgarian Writers’ Union and the Homer European Prize for Poetry and Art. In November 2016 Jidi Majia was awarded the prize of the Bucharest Poets’ Association. Since 2007 he is the President of the organizers committee of the International Qinghai Lake Poetry Festival and also the president of the “Golden Antelope” Award Jury.

Gao Xing (1963, Jiangsu Province, China) graduated from Beijing Foreign Study University in 1987. He is the author of several books of essays and hundreds of poems. He has also translated Milan Kundera, Ivan Klima, Marin Sorescu, Nichita Stănescu, Ana Blandiana, Ismail Kadare, Tomaž Šalamun and many others. He is serving currently as Editor-in-Chief of World Literature, a famous journal in China.

 

 

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CROATIA

Nadežda Čačinovič (1947, Croatia) is a philosopher, sociologist, comparatist, feminist and Croatian-language book author. She attended elementary and middle schools in Zürich, Bern, Belgrade, Murska Sobota, and Ljubljana. She graduated in philosophy and comparative literature at the University of Ljubljana. She studied also in Bonn, Frankfurt and Zagreb. Since 1976, Nadežda Čačinovič has been a professor at the Department of Philosophy of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb. President of the Croatian P.E.N. Centre, since 2009, and member of International PEN.

Selected bibliography: The Subject of Critical Theory (Zagreb, 1980), Writing and Thinking (Zagreb, 1981), An Essay on Literacy (Zagreb, 1994), Constructed as Female (Zagreb, 2001),

Introducing Mediology (Zagreb, 2001), An Intelligent Woman’s Guide To World Literature (Zagreb, 2007), Why Read Philosophers (Zagreb, 2010), On Love, Books and Talking Things (Zagreb, 2012), Culture and Civilization (Zagreb, 2012).

Olja Savičević Ivančević (1974, Croaţia) graduated from the Social and Humanistic Sciences Faculty in Zadar, Croatia, where she also received a master’s degree. Her books have been translated into nine languages and fragments from her prose and poems have been published into more than thirty languages. She is the winner of the Iowa University literary scholarship within the International Writing Program and also of a writing residence in Istanbul, offered by the Traduki international network. For Nasmijati psa Olja Savičević Ivančević received   “Prozakom” Prize and the daily Večernji list offered her the “Ranko Marinković” Prize for short stories. She received the “Kiklop” award for the Kućna pravila poetry volume. The novel Adio kauboju was declared by the T-Portal the best novel of the year and received the “Jure Kaštelan” prize of the Slobodna Dalmacija daily. The same novel has been dramatized. Some of her short stories have been adapted for short film scripts and some plays have been turned into children theatre texts. Olja Savičević Ivančević lives as a freelancer in Split.

Bibliography: Bit će strašno kada ja porastem (1988), Vječna djeca (1993), Žensko pismo (1999), Puzzlerojc (2005), Kućna pravila (2007), Mamasafari (i ostale stvari) (2012), Nasmijati psa, short stories (2006), Adio kauboju, novel (2010), Pjevač u noći, novel (2016).

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CZECH REPUBLIC

Olga Walló (1948, Prague) is a poet, fiction writer and film director, daughter of Czech director K. M. Walló. She received her degree (PhD) in Philosophy and Psychology at Prague Charles University. For 35 years she worked at Czech TV, translating and dubbing more than 1000 movies and plays, including BBC’s Complete Works of William Shakespeare. She has a blog specialised in film criticism and dubbing. Ten years long she wrote a column in a cultural and educational life style magazine Krásná paní (Fair Lady). She teaches at FAMO (Film Academy) in Písek and at the International Conservatory in Prague. She spent a lot of time traveling. Meantime she lives at the countryside and writes.

Selected bibliography: Dlouhá zima (Long Winter, collected poems 1958-98), Votobia, 1998; Pistole generála Gablera (A Pistol of General Gabler), Motto, 1999; Kráčel po nestejně napjatých lanech (Tightrope! A Bohemian Tale), Labyrint, 2007; the thrilogy Towers of St. Spirit (1999-2001); Jak jsem zabila maminku (The Way I Murdered My Mum), Labyrint, 2008; Odfoukněte tu mouchu (Blow the Fly Away, poems), Powerprint, 2017; Láska k stáru (Love in Later Life, poems), Powerprint, 2017. Her poems were translated into Chinese at Proverse, Hong Kong, 2010, and in English, at Viking Press, 2015.

Simona Racková (1976) is a poet, editor, literary critic and journalist. She studied Czech language and literature at the Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic. Since 2013 she has been the head of the review department at the prestigious art and literary magazine Tvar. She also edited an annual publication, Sto nejlepších českých básní 2012 (One Hundred Best Czech Poems; Host Publ.), and a two-volume Antologie české poezie in 2007 and 2009 respectively (An Anthology of Czech Poetry; dybbuk Publishers). Her debut poetry collection Přítelkyně (Girlfriends; Literární salon Publisher, Prague) was published in 2007. Her collection of twelve poems about Venice, Město, které není (A City that Doesn’t Exist), accompanied by linocuts of Pavel Piekar, was printed privately as a small-run publication in 2009. It was followed by the 2015 collection Tance (Dances, in the Dauphin Publ., Prague). She is the 2016 winner of the International Dresden Lyrical Prize. Racková’s latest collection Zatímco hlídací psi spí is currently in the manuscript stage and should be out later this year (While the Guard Dogs Are Asleep; Dauphin Publ., Prague).

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DENMARK

Claus Ankersen  is an Danish writer, artist and intergalactic traveler, working situationistic with spokenword and liveliterature, poetry, fiction, installation, video- and soundscapes, painting and various cross-over forms. Originally educated in Cultural Anthropology and Communications at Universities in Aarhus (AAU), Copenhagen (KU) and Santa Barbara (UCSB), Claus Ankersen constantly examines and questions the human condition. Claus Ankersen has been instrumental in the development of Danish spoken word, and and inscribed the genre in literary history with his documentary „Peanuts and free beer” (2009). Recently Claus Ankersen have focused on his international career, and in 2008-16 he worked, exhibited, performed and created in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Finland, Estonia, Ukraine, Romania, Germany, Poland, Holland, Serbia, Croatia, Turkey, Armenia, India, England and the USA. Claus usually works on many simultaneous projects. He has initiated with Romanian poet Peter Sragher a volume of poetry within the Project Arghezi Revisited.

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ENGLAND

Christian Foley is a spoken word poet, musician and educator. He is one of the only few poets in the world to hold an MA in Spoken Word Education at Goldsmiths University. Christian has performed internationally in France and Australia, and also at major festivals in the UK. His poetry has also been featured in The Guardian, The Telegraph, 5live, the BBC and The Huffington Post. Christian Foley has appeared on Good Morning America, ITV’s This Morning and The Oprah Winfrey Network.

Christian has been shortlisted for Jerwood Compton Poetry Prize for his contribution to the field, and his work within Education. He has also been shortlisted as a BBC Introducing Artist of the Year, in the Urban Category, as well as selected in the top 20 promising Young Artists in the UK, aged 18-30 by Sky Arts.

He has just signed to Komplya Records and his first album Jumpers for Goalposts is out now.

SJ Fowler (Great Britain) is a poet and artist. He works in the modernist and avant-garde traditions, across poetry, fiction, theatre, sonic art, visual art, installation and performance. He has published various collections of poetry and text, and been commissioned by Tate Modern, BBC Radio 3, The British Council, Tate Britain, Liverpool Biennial and Wellcome Collection. He has been translated into 21 languages and performed at venues across the world, from Mexico City to Erbil, Beijing to Tbilisi. He is the poetry editor of 3am magazine, lecturer at Kingston University, teaches at Tate Modern and is the curator of the Enemies project. Poetry collections include: The Guide to Being Bear Aware (Shearsman Books, 2017); {Enthusiasm} (Test Centre, 2015); The Rottweiler’s Guide to the Dog Owner (Eyewear, 2014); Minimum Security Prison Dentistry (AAA, 2011); Fights (Veer books, 2011, 2nd edition, 2015); Red Museum (Knives Forks & Spoons press, 2011).

 

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ESTONIA

Kätlin Kaldmaa is an Estonian poet, writer, translator and literary critic. She has published four collections of poetry: Larii-laree (1996), One is None (2008), Worlds, Unseen (2009), and The Alphabet of Love (2012); three books for children: Four Children and Murka (2010), The Story of Somebody Nobodysdaughter’s Father (2012) and It’s Damn Good to be a Bad Girl (2016); an autobiographical non-fiction book, Happiness is the Matter of Choice (2013); a short story collection, The Little Sharp Knife (2014), and the novel No Butterflies in Iceland (2013). Collections of her poems have been published in English: One is None (2014), Arabic Geography of Love  (2015), and in Finnish, The Alphabet of Love (2015). She has widely written on literature, mostly about translation, and has translated herself more than 50 titles of world’s best literature from British Isles to Latin America. Her poems have been translated into Arabic, Asturian, Czech, Finnish, French, English, Galician, German, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Russian, Slovenian, Spanish and Turkish. In 2012 she won the annual Friedebert Tuglas short story award. Kätlin Kaldmaa is the President of Estonian PEN and as of 2016 serving as the International Secretary of PEN International. She is currently working on her second novel.

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FINLAND

Jarkko Tontti (Helsinki, Finland) is a poet, novelist, essayist, and lawyer, and lives in Helsinki. He is former president of Finnish PEN and is currently member of PEN International Executive Board.

Tontti studied law, philosophy and literature at the universities of Helsinki, Edinburgh, Berlin and Brussels. He published two collections of poetry, four novels and two collections of essays. He received his PhD in law from the University of Helsinki in 2002 and is a specialist in philosophy of law, freedom of expression and copyright law.

Tontti’s first published collection of poetry, Vuosikirja (Book of Years, 2006), won the Kalevi Jäntti Literature prize for young authors. His poems have been translated into English, French, Swedish, Italian, Russian, Japanese, Estonian, German, Greek, Slovenian, Latin, Polish and Portuguese.

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FRANCE

Sylvestre Clancier (1946, Limoges, France) is poet and essayist. As a teenager he was a follower of Surrealism and Grand Jeu, and participated to post-avantgarde movements: TXT, Generation, Textruction, during the 60s and early 70s. His poetry has been translated in many languages. He has published more than thirty books, part of which were created together with visual artists. His recent poetry books are: Anima Mia, Dans le noir & A travers les âges, Corps à Corps, Le Témoin incertain, La Source et le royaume. His essay La Voie des poètes brings new focus on Artaud, Daumal, Michaux and others famous French poets. He is honoured in many anthologies. An essay, Le Voyage et la Demeure, about his poetic universe was written by Christine Bini and published by L’herbe qui tremble in 2016. He was for many years a PEN International board member and is currently chairman of  French PEN, of Mallarmé Academy and Poetry House in Paris.

 

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GERMANY

Regula Venske (1955, Germany) is a German writer best known for her crime fiction, but she also writes experimental prose and literary criticism and, once in a while, comes up with a poem. She wrote a thesis on the Construction and criticism of masculinity in contemporary German-language literature by women and received her PhD in 1988. She taught German literature at Hamburg University, Free University of Berlin and Queen Mary College, London, and is regularly teaching creative writing, both in schools and for adults. Regula Venske received a number of literary awards, including the Oldenburg Jugendbuchpreis, the German Crime-Writing Award (Deutscher Krimipreis) and the Lessing Scholarship of the City of Hamburg. She has been a member of German PEN since 1998 and was elected General Secretary in May 2013. Since October 2015, she is also a board member of PEN International.

 

 

 

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GREECE

VICTOR IVANOVICI (1947, Tulcea, Romania) graduated from the Faculty of Romanic, Classical and Oriental languages in Bucharest. Postuniversity studies at the Málaga University (Spain) and a PhD on Gabriel García Márquez at the Cluj University (Romania). Since 1985 Victor Ivanovic has lived and worked in Greece. In 2003 he became teacher of hispanic literature at the University of Salonic. At present he is professor emeritus at the same University. Victor Ivanovici is very well known for his essays in hispanic studies, but also for his comparative and translation studies. He wrote his works in either Romanian, Greek, Spanish or French. He also has an impressive translator activity. We mention only: Odysseas Elytis (Romanian, Spanish), Octavio Paz (Romanian, Greek), Paul Celan, the Romanian poems (Greek, Spanish), Gellu Naum (Greek, Spanish), Nichita Stănescu (Greek), Ion Vianu (Spanish), Norman Manea (Greek, Spanish).

Selective bibliography: Triptic neoelenic. Cavafis, Seferis, Sikelianós (Greek), Athens, Hexantas, 1979; Formă şi deschidere (Romanian), Eminescu Publishing House, 1980 (Romanian Writers’ Union Prize, 1981); El mundo de la nueva narrativa hispanoamericana (Spanish), Quito, Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana, 1998; Gabriel García Márquez y su Reino de Macondo (Spanish), Madrid, Sial Publishing House, 2008 (Internaíonal Sial Prize); Un caftan pentru Don Quijote (Romanian), Ideea Europeană Publishing House, 2011; La casa del Poeta, colective volume (studies and essays about Omar Lara, Spanish), Puebla (Mexic), 2011.

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HUNGARY

Géza Szőcs (1953, Hungary) was born in Târgu Mureș; he is a poet, writer, playwright, journalist, literary translator and publisher. In 1982 he was arrested for publishing anti-Ceaușescu texts and later forced to leave the country. He lived in Switzerland from 1989, where he became the chief of Radio Free Europe’s Budapest office. He returned to Romania after 1990, when he began a career in politics as well. He became senator of the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania.

He has fifteen volumes of poetry in Hungarian, books in German, Chinese, Italian, Romanian, Russian, Polish, Croatian, Spanish. His poems were published in many English anthologies and have also been translated into multiple languages. His Hungarian translations of American, Romanian, German, French, Italian, English and Russian poets have been published in various literary magazines. Editor-in-chief of several periodicals and, together with Romanian poet Mircea Dinescu, the co-founder of a poets’s republic, which was conceived as a virtual refuge based on traditional European values, shelter and home for artists, environmentalists and thinkers faced with an increasingly mechanized world. From June 2010 until June 2012 he was the leader of cultural policy in the Hungarian Government. From 2011, President of the Hungarian PEN Club. Among the numerous awards he has recieved, we mention: József Attila Award, special award from the Salvatore Quasimodo festival, Award For the Hungarian Culture, Grand Award of the League of Hungarian Writers in Transylvania. In 2008 he got the Award of the Romanian Writers’ Association, Award of the European Academy (Vienna), and Kossuth Prize (the most important Hungarian National Award) in 2015.

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ITALY

Marco di Pasquale (1976, Italy) studied modern and contemporary literature in Macerata, where he lives. Since 2008, he has worked in an Italian Institute of Linguistics. Since 2004 he has been an active literary operator in many associations (Licenze poetiche, ADAM Accademia, UMANIEVENTI). In this period he worked as coordinator of lecture groups in some cities of region Marche, and in 2011 he taught a creative writing course. From 2006 to 2008 he directed the arts festival “Rampe per alianti”, and from 2009 to 2013, the poetry magazine “Poesia Leonis Minifest”. In 2015 he conceived the poetic hub “Poesie di terra”.  He also collaborates as a literary and musical critic with the online magazine “L’Adamo”, and since 2014, he has been writing a column entitled “Poesia Domani” for the radio station Domani.

In May 2015 he took part in “Turnilur scriitorilor”,a  literary festival in Sighișoara (Romania) and ranked second at the National Prize “Poesia senza confine”. He published his poems in many anthologies, among which L’opera continua (Roma, Perrone, 2005), and Scrittura amorosa (Rimini, Fara, 2008), as well as on several literary websites (La poesia e lo spirito, Pordenonelegge, Poetarum Silva, Versante Ripido, Perigeion). In 2009 he published his first collection, Il fruscio secco della luce (Porto Sant’Elpidio, Wizarts, republished in a new expanded edition by Vydia Editore). He regularly tells his own writing experience and reflections on literature on his blog: www.marcodipasquale.it

 

Bruno Mazzoni, born in Naples in 1946, studied Romanic philology at the „Federico II” University of Naples, which he graduated in 1969. In 1967 he received a scholarship at the summer courses in Sinaia, organized by Boris Cazacu, and in the third year he decided to do a research related to Romania for the diploma thesis. The thesis was about Ideology and Language at the Transylvanian School - a subject about that in Italy little was known. In 1969, the post of the Italian lecturer at the University of Bucharest, whom Marco Cugno occupied by then, the biggest Romanian-Italian translator, was released. Between 1970 and 1973, he was an Italian lecturer at the University of Bucharest and a lecturer at the University of Cluj. Although the commute was quite tiring, this travelling between Bucharest and Cluj, two different university backgrounds, represented the yeast that attached itself to different worlds - from the „Echinox”, the famous Cluj magazine to the Writers’ Union. So he discovered a country where literature was vital, it was a real necessity, which is not the case in Italy. In Romania he saw queues at the bookstores when selling poems by Marin Sorescu, Ana Blandiana or Nichita Stanescu. Currently, he teaches Romanian language and literature at the University of Pisa, where he is the dean of the Faculty of Foreign Languages. He is Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Bucharest and was awarded by the President of the Italian Republic for his work as a translator in 2005. He has translated several volumes of Mircea Cărtărescu, Ana Blandiana, Max Blecher in Italian, published studies about Tudor Arghezi, Ion Barbu, Nichita Stănescu. For 20 years, he did not deal with translations, because in Italy there is the idea that a university professor does not have to translate, but to exclusively do the research. Over time, he realized that in order to promote a culture, you need to get involved, to have links with publishers and to recommend books. He currently lives in Rome.

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INDIA

Mangalesh Dabral is a Hindi poet and journalist. His books include eight volumes of poems, two collections of literary essays and socio-cultural commentary, a book of conversations and travels based on his experiences in Iowa, USA, where he was a scholar of the International Writing Program in 1991. His poems have been widely translated and published in several Indian and international languages. They have been included in Poetry Review, World Literature Today, Modern Poetry in Translation, The Little Magazine, Odra and various anthologies. One of his books of poems in Italian translation was published in Venice. A selection from his poems in English translations was published by BOA Editions, Rochester, New York.  He has participated in the Poetry International Festival, Rotterdam, Max Mueller Bhavan’s Poets Translating Poets Festival, Mumbai, Sabad International Poetry Festival and VAK Festival of Indian Poetry, New Delhi.  He has also given poetry readings in a number of countries including Bulgaria, Japan, Russia, Switzerland and Germany. He received a number of awards including the prize of The National Academy of Letters, India. One of his poems has been engraved at the entrance gate of the city centre in Eislingen, Germany, where he has recently visited and gave poetry reading in Tübingen, Ulm and other cities as well.

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KOREA

Lee Gil-Won (1945, South Korea) graduated from Yonsei University and he is currently the president of the Korean PEN Club, and member of PEN International. He plays a key role in the Korean literary world through his many appointments, including membership in the board of the literary centre “Literature House, Seoul”, editor and publisher of PEN International, and president of the Korean Writers Alliance. He published several collections of poems among which Sunset Glow and Mask. His poems have been translated into English, French, Hungarian, etc. He was awarded the presidential Korean Culture and Arts Prize, the “Cyu’ŏn Sangbyŏng” Poetry Prize, and the “Yun Tongju” Literature Prize.

 

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 MACEDONIA

Katica Kulakova (1951, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) has published more than twenty five books of poetry (both in Macedonian and in translation), as well as two collections of short stories, one play, and approximately forty other books, as both author and editor. Her poetry books have been translated into Russian, Romanian, French, English, Italian, Albanian, Croatian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Portuguese, Turkish, and Montenegrin. She has received numerous Macedonian literary awards and Tudor Arghezi award of Romanian Writers’ Union (2016). She is a Professor of Literary Theory at the University of Skopje, a member of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences & Arts and of the European Academy of Sciences & Arts (Salzburg), and Vice-President of PEN International. Passions: art photo and astrology. She lives in Skopje, with her son and husband.

 

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MOLDOVA

Emilian Galaicu-Păun (1964, Republic of Moldova) graduated the Philology Faculty of the State University of Chișinău and has a PhD from Maxim Gorki University in Moscow. He is a member of the Writers’ Union in Moldova and Romania and is also a member of the PEN Club. Correspondent of the „Vatra” cultural magazine and editor in chief of Cartier Publishing House in Chișinău. He has his own radio show, Carte la pachet, at Radio Free Europe. Emilian Galaicu Păun is a laureate of the National Prize of Republic of Moldova (2015).

Published books: (Poetry): Lumina proprie, Literatura Artistică, 1986; Abece-Dor, Literatura Artistică, 1989; Levitaţii deasupra hăului, Hyperion, 1991; Cel bătut îl duce pe Cel nebătut, Dacia, 1994; Yin Time, Vinea, 1999; Gestuar, Axa, 2002; Yin Time (neantologie), Litera, 2004; Arme grăitoare, Cartier, 2009; A-Z.best, Arc, 2012; Arme grăitoare, anthology (ne varietur edition), Cartier, 2015; (Prose) Gesturi (Trilogia nimicului), Cartier, 1996; Ţesut viu. 10 x 10, Cartier, 2011, 2014 (Prize of the Writers’ Union in Moldova); (Essay) Poezia de după poezie, Cartier, 1999 (Prize of the Writers’ Union in Moldova).

Emil Galaicu-Păun is also a very well-known literary translator from French. His works have been translated into 20 languages and have been included into numerous anthologies in Moldova, Romania and abroad.

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NETHERLANDS

Maja Jantar  is director, performer, vocal and visual artist.

Organic materials, red cord, lines, patterns emerge in various facets of her work, in an attempt to bind and connect, weaving the sound into the red; reading the lines; adding to the playful concepts of her operatic productions; creating book works of liquid sound made solid, installations of floating pages gone silent.

In performance she invites to enter the field of the imaginary, the inner world, the inner stream, the shamanistic, enchanting, prophetic. Circumventing the stage of the rational, in an attempt to enter through the back door of the intuitive. Sometimes aided by video work exploring nature’s patterns and rhythms or visual scores, or books bound out of old action paintings.

In opera she works intuitively, her background enables her to engage with the matter at a level of great ease and understanding. Working in an atmosphere of joy to catalyse the uniqueness of the singers into unity. Her concepts are poetic in various ways, be it story based, be it poetic in the way the various aspects of the performance are arranged to create a meta-poem. Her formation in visual arts creates a red line through her work, be it in the scores, the books, the scenography of her opera productions.

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POLAND

Enormi Stationis (1983, Bartosz Radomski) is a Polish classical philologist, conceptualist, poet, translator of classical literature and Romanian literature. PhD student at the Institute of Classical Philology at the University of Warsaw, member of the Polish Philological Society, member of the Association of Polish Authors. His poems are published in many anthologies and poetry magazines. Enormi Stationis is the author of the volume of mythological-erotic poems, Centaurydy. Multiple scholarship holder of the Romanian Institute of Culture in Bucharest and Francophone University Agency. His doctoral research leads to old Romanian literature and the literary union between Poland and Moldavia in the seventeenth century. His doctoral dissertation is focused on the neo-stoic philosophy of Andreas Wissowatius and its reconstruction in Dimitrie Cantemir's work, Divanul... He lives and works in Warsaw. In his free time he likes to travel.

 

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RUSSIA

Nikolay Zvyagintsev (1967, Moscow region) is a graduate of the Moscow Architecture Institute. Zvyagintsev worked as an architect-restorer for several years, then left architecture for advertising, where he has worked for the last twenty four years. Nikolay Zvyagintsev became a member of the Poluostrov (Peninsula) group, together with Igor Sid, Maria Maksimova, and Mikhail Laptev at the beginning of the 1990s and participated in Bosporus forums on contemporary art and culture (1993-1995). Zvyagintsev’s poems were first published in 1991, in Russian Courier newspaper. Since then he has published poetry in numerous newspapers, magazines and almanacs.

Zvyagintsev has six published books of poetry: Спинка пьющего из лужи (The Spine of the One Who’s Drinking from a Puddle), Moscow: ARGO-RISK, 1993; Законная область притворства (The Legal Terrain of Hypocrisy), Moscow: ARGO-RISK, 1996; Крым НЗ (Crimea ES), Мoscow: OGI, 2001; Туц (Toots), Мoscow: Novoe Izdatelstvo, 2008; Улица Тассо, (Tasso Street), Moscow: New Literary Review, 2012; Взлётка (Runway), N.Y.: Ailuros Publishing, 2015. Poems by Nikolay Zvyagintsev have been translated into English, French, Italian, Spanish, Romanian, Estonian and Ukrainian. Zvyagintsev was shortlisted for the 2008 Andrei Bely Award for his collection of poems Toots. Zvyagintsev is Fellow of the Memory Fund of Joseph Brodsky (2009). He is Laureate of the Moscow Account Prize (2013, for his collection of poems Tasso Street).

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SERBIA

Adam Puslojić (1943) serbian poet and translator, born in Cobişniţa village, near the border region with Romania. He studied Philology at the Belgrad University and made his debut with a volume of poetry, Postoji Zemlja, in 1967. He soon becomes one of the best translators of Romanian contemporary writers. The translated authors list is impressive: Marin Sorescu, Nichita Stănescu, Petre Stoica, Geo Bogza, Adrian Păunescu, Mircea Dinescu and many others. His own poems have been translated into more than 20 languages, the Romanian versions being signed by Nichita Stănescu and Ioan Flora. 1995, he becomes honoray member of the Romanian Academy and of the Romanian Academy of science, literature and arts in Oradea. In Serbia, Puslojić is a laureate of The Contribution to the national Culture Prize and Ivo Andrić Prize (2014). He currently lives and works in Belgrad and in the country side, Valea Timocului region. Books published into Romanian: Plâng, nu plâng (1991), Adaos (1999), Versuri din mers (2003), Trimitor la vise, (2005), Tăcere lustruită (2006), Asimetria durerii (2009), Exaltare din abis, Inscripţii abrupte, Culmea (2016).

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SLOVENIA

Barbara Korun  (1963, Ljubljana) owns a degree in the Slovene language and comparative literature at the University of Ljubliana. She worked as a teacher and also as a language advisor at the Slovene National Theatre. For the moment she is a freelance writer.
Her poem collection, The Edge of Grace (1999), received the National Book Fair Award for a debut.  For her fourth volume of poetry she received the Veronika Award (for the best poetry collection of 2011) and Zlata Ptica Prize (Golden Bird) for outstanding achievements in literature and was also nominated for the award for the best literature book of the year. Barbara Korun is a member of Slovene Writers Association and was a member of Slovene PEN as well as the board member of two literary reviews. Together with jazz composer and percussionist Zlatko Kaučič she recorded a CD – Vibrato of Silence, with poems of Srečko Kosovel, Slovene avantgarde poet. Her work has been published in more then twenty languages.

Veronika Dintinjana (Slovenia) is a poet and translator. Recognized as the best young author in 2002 at the Festival of Young Literature, she has since published her poems in various magazines, such as Mentor, Literatura, Sodobnost, Nova Revija, Dialogi, Poetikon, Lirikon and Apokalipsa. Her first book of poems, Rumeno gori grm forzicij (Yellow Burns the Forsythia Bush) received the Best First Book award at the 24^th Slovenian Book Fair in 2008, when she also won the Slovenian poetry tournament and the 6^th Ljubljana poetry slam. Her poems have been translated into Italian, English, Spanish, Galician, French, German, and Dutch. Her second book, V suhem doku (In Dry Dock) was published in December 2016.

As a translator, Veronika Dintinjana has published poems and essays by Louise Glück, Muriel Rukeyser, Denise Levertov, Ursula K. Le Guin, Stanley Kunitz, Ciaran O’Driscoll. She has co-translated the 20^th century Irish poetry anthology Čudovita Usta (Marvellous Mouth).

As founder and manager of the “Kentaver” Arts and Literature Society, she organises monthly poetry readings (“Mlade Rime”), hosted since 2005 by “Menza pri Koritu” at “Metelkova” (and, more recently, at the “Autonomous Zone Rog”) in Ljubljana. The reading season begins in October and ends in July with a festival. She lives and works in Ljubljana.

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SPAIN

Ioana Gruia (1978, Bucharest) is a writer of Spanish language, researcher and professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Granada. She published the novels El expediente Albertina (Tiflos Prize, Castalia/Edhasa, 2016) and La vendedora de tiempo (Espuela de Plata, 2013), as well as the poetry books Carrusel (Emilio Alarcos Prize, Visor, 2016) and El sol en la fruta (Young Andaluzian Prize, Renacimiento, 2011), also published in Romanian translation at Tracus Arte (2015) and in French at L’Harmattan (2014). Ioana Gruia was invited to the International Book Fair of Guadalajara, Mexico, and to the XVIIIth Encuentro de Poetas del Mundo Latino, Mexico. She was finalist of the Federico García Lorca poetry prize of the University of Granada in 2002 and she obtained the same prize, for short story, in 2007. She is the author of the essays Eliot y la escritura del tiempo en la poesía española contemporánea (Visor, 2009) and La cicatriz en la literatura europea contemporánea (Renacimiento, 2015).

Jordi Valls i Pozo (1970, Barcelona) is a Catalan poet and currently works in a bookshop in the centre of Barcelona. Having won the “Jocs Florals de la Llengua Catalana” in 2006, he is the first author who holds the title of Poet of the City. Carles Martí, town councillor of culture in the Council of Barcelona defined him as “a citizen of the Metropolis who knows how to capture the instants in which the human life expresses with all its beauty”. Ernest Farrés, author of the anthology called 21 poetes del XXI (2001), states that “in the hands of Jordi Valls, poetry is not only subversion, but it is most of all the essence of the literary fact”. Among his published books we mention: D'on neixen les penombres? (Columna, 1995, awarded the Martí Dot de poesia Prize, 1994), Violència gratuïta (Ed. 62, 2006, awarded the Jocs Florals Prize, 2006), L'illa misteriosa (Rosa Leveroni de Poesia Prize, 2014), Guillem Tell (Adia, 2016). His writings have been translated into Spanish, English and Italian. Jordi Valls presided The Associació de Joves Escriptors en Llengua Catalana (Association of Young Catalan Language Writers) from 1994 to 1996, and is a member of The Associació d’Escriptors en Llengua Catalana (AELC) and The PEN Club Català (Catalan PEN Club).

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TURKEY

Haydar Ergülen (1956, Turkey) studied sociology at METU (Middle East Technical University) from Ankara. He worked as a copywriter in advertising. His first poetry book, Karşılığını Bulamamış Sorular (Questions who could not find their answers), was published in 1981. He wrote 13 poetry collections and 12 essay books. Winner of various Turkish poetry prizes. He has been member of the jury in many poetry contests. Together with friends, he edited the poetry magazines “Üç Çiçek” (Three Flowers) in 1983 and “Şiir Atı” (Poetry Horse) in 1986. He was one of the founder of “Yazılıkaya” (Written Rock), a magazine issued in Eskişehir. Haydar Ergülen attended various poetry festivals and events in Turkey and abroad. He is director of the International Eskişehir Poetry and the İzmir International Literature festivals. He gives lectures at numerous universities on poetry and philosophy, and organizes creative writing workshops. He constantly writes for various literary newspapers and magazines, and he is consultant of arts & literature for the online magazine “Artful Living”. Two of his books were published in France: Carnet Intime (Al Manar, 2012) and Grenade ou Nar (translated by Claire Lajus, L'Harmattan, 2015). Many of his poems have been published in international poetry anthologies and magazines.

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UKRAINE

Mykola Riabchuk (Ukraine) is a prose writer and essayist, co-founderand co-editor of the “Krytyka” monthly and, since 2014, the head of the Ukrainian PEN-Center. He regularly contributes to the international “Eurozine”, Polish “Kultura Enter” and German “Osteuropa”. His recentbooks include The Previous Life (in Ukrainian, 2013), Ukraina:syndrom postkolonialny (in Polish, 2014), A két Ukrajna (inHungarian, 2015), and Sisyphus and Stones (2016). A few of his essays were published also in Romanian in “Altera” magazine.

 

 

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USA

Adam J. Sorkin has published more than fifty books of Romanian poetry in English translation and won numerous awards including the Poetry Society (U.K.) Translation Prize for Marin Sorescu’s The Bridge, the Kenneth Rexroth Memorial Translation Prize, the Ioan Flora Translation Prize, and the Poesis Translation Prize, among others. Forthcoming in 2017 are Syllables of Flesh by Floarea Ţuţuianu, translated with Irma Giannetti (Plamen Press, 2017), and Eclogue by Ioana Ieronim, translated with the author (Červená Barva Press). He is Distinguished Professor of English at Penn State University, Brandywine.

 

 

LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs (U.S.A.) is a writer, vocalist and sound artist, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs is the author of TwERK (Belladonna, 2013). Her interdisciplinary work has been featured at the Brooklyn Museum, the Poesiefestival Berlin, Museum of Modern Art, the QOW conference in Slovakia, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Walker Art Center and the 2015 Venice Biennale. As a curator and director, she has staged events at BAM Café, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, The David Rubenstein Atrium, The Highline, Poets House and El Museo del Barrio. LaTasha is the recipient of numerous awards, of them include New York Foundation for the Arts, Barbara Deming Memorial Grant, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the Japan-US Friendship Commission, Creative Capital and the Whiting Literary Award. Co-founder and co-editor of Coon Bidness/SO4 magazine, she lives in Harlem.

 

Tara SKURTU, born in Key West, Florida, is a Boston-based poet and translator currently living in Romania. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University and a double degree in English and Spanish from the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is a two-time Fulbright grantee, and she has received two Academy of American Poets prizes, a Marcia Keach Poetry Prize, and a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship.

Tara has taught at Boston University as a lecturer in creative writing, a lecturer in composition at BU’s Prison Education Program, and she served on the planning and teaching team for Robert Pinsky’s 2014 MOOC, “The Art of Poetry.”

Her poems are published and translated internationally, and recent work appears in The Kenyon Review, Plume, Poetry Review, and Poetry Wales. Tara is the author of the chapbook Skurtu, Romania (Eyewear Publishing, 2016) and the full poetry collection The Amoeba Game (Eyewear, 2017).

Yusef Komunyakaa was born on April 29 1941, in Bogalusa, Louisiana. He teaches at New York University and is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Komunyakaa is a recipient of the 1994 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Neon Vernacular. He also received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize and the 2007 Louisiana Writer Award. His subject matter ranges from the black general experience through rural Southern life before the Civil Rights era and his experience as a soldier during the Vietnam War. His collection Copacetic fuses jazz rhythms with the unique, arresting poetic imagery, that has since become his trademark. He wrote I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head, published in 1986, which won the San Francisco Poetry Prize. More attention came with the publication of Dien Cai Dau (Vietnamese for „Crazy in the head”), published in 1988, which focused on his experiences in Vietnam and won the Dark Room Poetry Prize. Komunyakaa began teaching poetry in the New Orleans public school system and creative writing at the University of New Orleans. In 2004, Komunyakaa began a collaboration with dramaturge and theatre producer Chad Gracia on a dramatic adaptation of The Epic of Gilgamesh, published in October 2006 by Wesleyan UP. Komunyakaa’s work has been influential for a wide swath of current American poets. Selected bibliography: Lost in the Bone Wheel Factory, 1979; Toys in a Field, 1986; Magic City, 1992; Thieves of Paradise, 1998; Pleasure Dome, 2001; Talking Dirty to the Gods, 2001; Taboo, 2004; Warhorses, 2008; The Chameleon Couch (shortlisted for the 2012 International Griffin Poetry Prize); The Emperor of Water Clocks, 2015.