The publisher Vera Michalski-Hoffmann, born in 1954, who has always been committed to promoting literature and the written word, founded the publishing group Libella with Jan Michalski. Since 1987 numerous authors have been brought out in French, Polish and  English at various publishing houses, including Noir sur Blanc, Buchet-Chastel, Phébus, Wydawnictwo Literackie, and World Editions. In 2004 Vera Michalski created the Jan Michalski Foundation for Writing and Literature, whose mission is to foster literary creation and encourage the practice of reading through a range of initiatives and activities.

The British novelist and biographer Jonathan Coe was born in 1961 in Birmingham (UK). He studied at the King Edward’s School and Trinity College, before going on to earn a PhD in English literature. He teaches at the University of Warwick. Coe made a name for himself internationally with his fourth novel, What a Carve Up!(Viking Press, 1994). The French translation, published the following year (Testament à l’anglaise, Gallimard, 1995), was awarded the Prix du Meilleur Livre étranger in 1996. His body of work has earned Coe a number of awards in his native Britain; published by Gallimard, his books have also garnered several prestigious prizes in France, including the 1998 Prix Médicis étranger for La maison du sommeil(The House of Sleep), and the 2019 European Book Prize for Le cœur de l’Angleterre (Middle England). In 2004 he became a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de France.

Born in 1973 in Sofia, Bulgaria, Kapka Kassabova is the author of several collections of poetry, novels, and narrative nonfiction books in both Bulgarian and English. In 1992 her family emigrated to New Zealand, where she studied French, Russian and English literature and published her first texts. In 2005 she settled in Scotland. Her first two books to be brought out in French by Marchialy, Lisière (2020; originally published as Border in 2017) and L’écho du lac (2021; originally published as To the Lake in 2020), have won several awards, including Prix Nicolas Bouvier, special mention for the Prix du livre européen, and the Prix du Meilleur Livre étranger for nonfiction. Her work has been translated into some twenty languages. Her last book in English, Elixir: In the Valley at the End of Time has been brought out by Jonathan Cape/Graywolf in 2023.

The Italian writer and journalist Andrea Marcolongo was born in 1987 in Crema, Italy. A scholar of ancient Greek with a degree in Classical Literature from the Università degli Studi in Milan, she has written several best-selling books, including La lingua geniale. 9 buone ragioni per amare il greco in 2016 (The Ingenious Language: Nine Epic Reasons to Love Greek, 2019); La misura eroica. Il mito degli argonauti e il coraggio che spinge gli uomini ad amare in 2018; Alla fonte delle parole. 99 etimologie che ci parlano di noi in 2019; and La Lezione di Enea in 2020 (Starting from Scratch: The Life-Changing Lessons of Aeneas, 2022). Her books have been translated in nearly thirty countries. She is also a member of the jury for the Prix du Grand Continent and is a regular contributor to Italian and foreign newspapers, including La Stampa and Le Figaro.

Born in 1969 in Paris, Valérie Mréjen is a French novelist, visual artist, and director of films and videos. A graduate of the École nationale supérieure d’arts of Cergy-Pontoise in 1994, she began by publishing artist’s books before entering the field of audiovisual production. She has made a number of short films and documentaries, including Pork and Milk (2004) and Valvert (2008), as well as the feature-length drama En ville (distributed internationally as Iris in Bloom) with Bertrand Schefer in 2011, which was shortlisted the same year for the Quinzaine des réalisateurs at Cannes. She published Mon grand-père (1999), L’agrume (2001), and Eau sauvage(2004) at Éditions Allia, and Forêt noire (2012), Troisième personne (2017) and La jeune artiste (2023) at Éditions P.O.L. Her artwork has been shown in France and abroad, notably at the Jeu de Paume, which devoted a solo show to her in 2008.

Gonçalo M. Tavares was born in Luanda, Angola, in 1970. A prize-winning Portuguese writer and professor of epistemology at the University of Lisbon, he is seen today as one of the main literary voices in that language and has published in a variety of genres, from novels and poetry, to plays and essays. His works have been translated into over fifty languages and have won a number of national and international awards, including the José Saramago Prize for Jerusalem in 2005, and France’s prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger for Learning to Pray in the Age of Technology in 2010. In 2019 was published in English Reading Is Walking.

Sjón (Sigurjón Birgir Sigurðsson) was born in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1962. He is a celebrated Icelandic novelist, poet, lyricist and screenwriter. His novels include The Blue Fox (2005 Nordic Council’s Literature Prize), From the Mouth of the Whale, The Whispering Muse, the trilogy CoDex 1962 and Red Milk (2019), and have been translated into thirty-five languages. His long-time collaboration with the singer Björk led to an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song, “I’ve Seen It All” from Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark. The most recent film he co-wrote is Robert Eggers’ feature The Northman (2022), inspired by the Icelandic sagas. He is the president of the Icelandic PEN Center.