Paata Shamugia is the most influential and provocative contemporary Georgian poet. He was born in March 1983 in Georgia. He graduated from philological faculty at Tbilisi state university. Since 2018 year Paata Shamugia is a president of the Georgian Pen Center. Paata’s texts, according to Georgian literary scholars, comprise a high amount of self-irony and sometimes even weird linguistic performances. In 2015 year he became the first Georgian poet to get the most prestigious SABA literary prize twice.

Armen Ohanyan (b.1979; pen name Armen of Armenia) is a fiction writer, essayist and literary translator based in Yerevan. He has received acclaim for his interactive short stories [The Return of Kikos] and the trilogy of novels [Mommyland]. These novels present the Armenian LGBTQI scene under a positive light for the first time in Eastern Armenian literature. His writing is significantly influenced by his civic activism; he is the president of PEN Armenia (since 2017), chairperson of the TIAC board, as well as board member of HRH Yerevan.

Born in 1985 in Chișinău, Republic of Moldova. With an academic background in philology and philosophy, he is interested in what does the fact that humans are embodied and speaking beings say about the way they are structured. His book of poetry, a kind space that would receive me as if embracing me, published in Romanian in 2013, received several literary prizes in the Republic of Moldova and in Romania.

Nadiia Telenchuk, poetess. Member of the National Writers Union of Ukraine (2013). Has four poetry books published: “Нова інтерпретація дощу” (“The New Interpretation of the Rain”, 2011), “Щастя в обгортці” (“Wrapped Happiness”, 2012); “Ніжна” (“Gentle”, 2014), “Дихай” (“Breathe”, 2019). Born in Kherson, Ukraine. Works can be found in regional and international publications. Active participant of the modern Berlin literary scene. Lives and works in Berlin.

Bas Böttcher is one of the co-founders of the German-language spoken word scene. His poems are considered classics of contemporary stage poetry. They appear in textbooks and important collections of German poetry (Der Neue Conrady, Lyrikstimmen, etc.). Together with Wolf Hogekamp he published the first Poetry Clip DVD in 2005. (Voland & Quist/Lingua Video) He also published the poetry collections Dies ist kein Konzert (2006), Neonomade (2009) and Vorübergehende Schönheit (2012) with the publishing house Voland & Quist.