A publisher, Vera Michalski-Hoffmann has devoted herself to the promotion of literature through the publishing group she founded with Jan Michalski. Starting in 1986, they published a wide range of authors, in French and Polish translations, through Noir sur Blanc, Buchet-Chastel, Phébus and Wydawnictwo Literackie. In 2004, Vera Michalski created the Fondation Jan Michalski pour l’écriture et la littérature to promote reading and provide support for writers.

Born in 1952 in Warsaw, Włodzimierz Bolecki is a theoretician and historian of Polish literature. He graduated from the University of Warsaw in 1976 with a degree in philology, before going on to get a PhD in literary studies. He began teaching in 1981 at the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, first as a lecturer, then adjunct professor, and finally full professor. As a guest speaker, he has lectured in numerous universities outside of Poland, including the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Canada, the United States, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland. He is a member of PEN, the Association of Polish Writers, the Scientific Society of Warsaw, and the Adam Mickiewicz Literary Society. He is also the author of books, articles and studies, and the editor of a number of collective publications.

Born in 1945 in Baidoa, Somalia, Nuruddin Farah is a novelist, short-story writer and essayist writing in English. While studying at the University of Punjab in India and subsequently teaching at the National University of Somalia, he published his first novel in 1970, From a Crooked Rib (reprinted by Penguin Editions in 2003), described as “one of the cornerstones of modern East African literature today.” His many publications include A Naked Needle (1976); Sweet and Sour Milk (1979), Sardines (1981), and Close Sesame (1983), which form the trilogy Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship; Secrets (1998), the last book in the Blood in the Sun trilogy; Knots (2007), from the Past Imperfect trilogy; and North of Dawn (2018). His novels, translated into some fifteen languages, have earned him a number of prestigious prizes, including the Kurt-Tucholsky-Preis in 1991, the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1998, and the Lettre Ulysses Award in 2003.

Born in 1949 in Aberdeen, the United Kingdom, Isabel Hilton is a writer and journalist based in London. Between 1973 and 1975, she studied Sinology at the University of Edinburgh, before going on to further her studies at the University of Languages and Cultures of Beijing and later at Fudan University of Shanghai. She has worked at several newspapers as a columnist, including The Sunday Times in 1977, The Independent in 1986, and The Guardian in 1997. The host of The World Tonight on BBC Radio 4 between 1995 and 1998, she joined BBC Radio 3 in 1999, where she has presented Night Waves. She published her first book, The Search for the Panchen Lama, in 1999. She is also the founder and editor-in-chief of China Dialogue, an independent not-for-profit organization.

Born in 1935 in Clermont-Ferrand, France, Georges Nivat is a scholar of Slavic languages specialized in translating the Russian world for French-speakers. Emeritus professor at the University of Geneva, he is also rector of the International Centre Lomonosov. After graduating from the Sorbonne with a licence in Russian and English, he began a career in academia, taking a series of teaching posts at the universities of Toulouse, Lille, and Paris X. Concomitantly he worked with two French publishers, L’Âge d’Homme and Fayard, and later served as president of the Rencontres Internationales de Genève. The author of numerous books and French translations, he has published a trilogy on Russian culture with L’Âge d’Homme: Vers la fin du mythe russe (1982), Russie-Europe, la fin du schisme (1993) and Vivre en russe (2007). He was awarded an honorary degree by the Mohyla Academy in Kyiv.

Born in 1965 in Sofia, Bulgaria, Ilija Trojanow is a Bulgarian-German writer, essayist, translator, and publisher. In 1971, his family fled Bulgaria for West Germany, where they received political asylum, then settled in Kenya for twelve years. Between 1984 and 1989, he studied law and ethnology at the University of Munich. In 1989, he founded Marino, a publishing house specialized in African literature, and began publishing essays and travel accounts dealing with Africa as well as German translations of African authors. His first novel, Der Weltensammler (2006, published in English as The Collector of Worlds, 2007), was awarded the Leipzig Book Fair Prize the same year of its original publication. His other titles available in English are Custodians of the Sun, Along the Ganges (2005), Mumbai to Mecca (2008), and The Lamentations of Zeno (2016). In 2002, he became a member of PEN Federal Republic of Germany.

Born in 1962 in Paris, Fabienne Verdier is a French painter known for her work that draws greatly on calligraphy. A graduate of the École supérieure des beaux-arts of Toulouse, she went on to study at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in China, where she would remain for ten years. This experience gave rise to Passagère du silence. Dix ans d’initiation en Chine, which was published by Albin Michel in 2003. Exhibited around the world, her artworks figure in the permanent collections of institutions like the Pompidou and Musée Cernuschi in Paris, the Chinese Cultural Ministry in Beijing, and the Hubert Looser Foundation in Zurich.