René Aguigah was born in 1974. He studied journalism, history and philosophy in Dortmund and Bochum. Since 1998, he has been a contributor to the features pages of the Frankfurter Rundschau, tageszeitung and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Between 2002 and 2005, he was a producer and presenter for WDR radio (Kritisches Tagebuch, Gutenbergs Welt). He has co-edited the magazine Literaturen since 2005.

Aris Fioretos was born in Göteborg in 1960, the son of Greek-Austrian parents. He studied at the University of Stockholm and at Yale University, completing a doctorate in 1991 and qualifying as a university lecturer in 2001. Since 1991, he has published short prose works, essays and novels, as well as translations of writers including Paul Auster, Jacques Derrida, Friedrich Hölderlin and Vladimir Nabokov. His books are currently being translated into a number of languages. He also writes for newspapers and magazines in Sweden and abroad.

Aris Fioretos was a guest of the Berlin Artists Programme of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in 1997/1998, a Fellow of the American Academy in Berlin in 2001 and then a Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. He is currently Counsellor for Cultural Affairs at the Swedish Embassy in Berlin.

Works in German

• Die Seelensucherin.
  A novel. Translated from the Swedish by Paul Berf. Cologne: DuMont Verlag, 2000.
• Die Wahrheit über Sascha Knisch.
  A novel. Translated from the Swedish by Paul Berf. Cologne: DuMont Verlag, 2003.
• Mein schwarzer Schädel.
  An essay. With a postscript by Durs Grünbein. Translated from the Swedish by Paul Berf. Berlin: DAAD Artists Programme, 2003.

Kristina Maidt-Zinke was born in Bremen, a city remote from literature. She read German, English and Scandinavian Literature and is now a free-lance features writer and translator. She cultivates rather old-fashioned literary tastes, from Goethe, Schiller, Flaubert and Kafka, to the New Frankfurt School, and privately has a greater affinity for music than for the written word. She was a literary critic for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung for a number of years and has been a regular contributor to the Süddeutsche Zeitung since 2001. She has lived for a time in Finland and Italy, and has now chosen to live in Munich.

Marius Meller, born 1969, studied German Literature, Philosophy and Musicology. He was literary editor of the Frankfurter Rundschau 2001-02, and literary editor (fiction and non-fiction) of the Tagesspiegel 2003-06. Since 2006 Marius Meller has worked as a literary critic for various outlets including the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Tagespiegel, and sundry radio stations, and has contributed articles and essays to periodicals such as Merkur and Kursbuch.

Claudia Rouvel, born 1952 in Berlin; librarian’s assistant, then librarian; 1981-84: literary studies course at Leipzig’s Institute for Literature; editor of the academic periodical Beiträge zur Kinder- und Jugendliteratur (published by Kinderbuchverlag Berlin in the GDR until 1990); press and publicity work for Kinderbuch Verlag Berlin until 1993; honorary member of the steering committee of the Arbeitskreis für Jugendliteratur (Study Group on Children’s Literature); 1993—: director of programmes at LesArt, the Berlin Centre for Children’s and Teenage Literature; articles on literary criticism, and on creative ways of encouraging children and young people to read; membership of various prize juries.