Kerstin Lücker was born 1974 in the Palatine and grew up right at the German Weinstraße. She studied musicology, philosophy and Slavic Literature in Dresden, Brno (Cz) and Vienna and took her doctoral degree in music theory. She lives as a freelance author, translator and editor in Berlin.

Gudrun Lerchbaum, born 1965, grew up in Vienna, Paris and Düsseldorf and studied philosophy and architecture. Together with her patchwork family, she lives in Vienna and works as a freelancer in the fields of architecture, graphics and art.
As of 2006, she writes novels and short stories, which were published in several small editing houses and anthologies. Her historical novel Die Venezianerin und der Baumeister will be published in january 2015 by Aufbau.

Nili Landesman was born in 1966 in the Kibbutz Ayelet Hashachar in Northern Israel. After military service, which she spent as a journalist at the army magazine Bamachane, she moved to Tel Aviv. There she worked for the popular magazine Ha´ir as a music journalist.
After that she became one of the trendsetting fashion journalists in Israel. During that period, she wrote two very successful novels. Moreover Nili Landesman wrote numerous TV scripts. Her third novel In good and bad times, her most ambitious book so far, was enthusiastically reviewed by critics and initially climbed the bestseller lists in Israel after publication.

Ann Mbuti was born in 1990. In her projects, texts, and radio features she is dealing with contemporary art and culture, and its potential for social change. Mbuti studied Journalism and Communication Sciences, German Literature, and Creative Writing in Zurich and Paris. She is a freelance author and journalist, living in Zurich. Her essays and articles are being published regularly in newspapers, magazines and exhibition catalogues.

Daniel Mellem was born in 1987 and lives in Hamburg. He studied physics in Hamburg and London and earned his PhD on mitochondrial networks before he started working on his first novel at the German Institute for Literature in Leipzig. He attended the writing class of the Jürgen-Ponto-Foundation and his work was published in the Hamburg literature yearbook Ziegel. The manuscript of Die Erfindung des Countdowns (The invention of the countdown) won the Retzhof Award for Young Literature 2017 and the Hamburg Advancement Award for Literature in 2018 as well.

 

  

Daniel Mezger was born in 1978 in Switzerland. He studied acting in Bern, then worked for several years at theatres and now lives in Zürich. He studied at the Swiss Literature Institute in Biel, where he now teaches regularly as a guest lecturer, and is the singer in the band A Bang And A Whimper. Mezger’s plays are staged in all German-speaking countries and were awarded with diverse prizes. With an excerpt from Land spielen he was invited to the Ingeborg-Bachmann-Competition. The novel was published in 2012 by Salis, was nominated for the Rauriser Literaturpreis 2013 and awarded with the Werkjahr of the city of Zürich. His current novel project Alles außer ich was awarded with a grant from the Pro Helvetia and the Werkjahr of the canton of Zürich and will be published in 2019 by Salis.

Thomas Melle was born in 1975 in Bonn and lives in Berlin. He studied comparative literature and philosophy in Tübingen, Austin (Texas) and Berlin. Thomas Melle participated in the Ingeborg-Bachmann contest and his translation of the novel Whores for Gloria (de.: Huren für Gloria) by William T. Vollmann was nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize. His novel Sickster was longlisted for the German Book Prize, 3000 Euro and Die Welt im Rücken reached the shortlist. In 2017 he was awarded the Klopstock Prize and became writer-in-residence of Bergen-Enkheim.

Can Merey was born in 1972 in Frankfurt on the Main to a Turkish father and a German mother. He spent some of his school years in Teheran, Singapore and Cairo. Having studied social work, he first worked in this field in Aachen, then went to Istanbul to work as freelance journalist.
After that, he applied for a traineeship at the dpa (en.: German press agency). For them he worked in Istanbul and in Berlin in the Germany section and also as a correspondent on environment and consumers' protection issues. From 2003 till 2013 Can Merey was South East Asia correspondent for the dpa in New Delhi and has travelled numerous times to Afghanistan on research assignments. Ever since he is based in Istanbul, as head of department for the dpa.

Thomas Medicus, born in 1953, studied German, political sciences and art history in Marburg/Lahn and earned his PhD in 1982. He worked as freelance journalist for outlets such as Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Deutschlandfunk and Baseler Zeitung, and as an editor fpr the Der Tagesspiegel in Berlin and the Frankfurter Rundschau. In 2001 and in 2006 he was a fellow of The Society of the Federal Republic at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research.
In 2007 Medicus was Goethe-Munk writer at the Munk Centre for International Affairs at the University of Toronto. Since February 2008 Thomas Medicus is a visiting scholar at the Hamburg Institute of Social Research. He has been living with his family in Berlin for more than 20 years.

After his studies (music, philosophy and teaching degree for medical grooming), Moritz Matthies decided to become a journalist. The undercover report Nimm mich mit about the Marburg animal shelter gained him a job as an editor at the Discovery Channel, where he was responsible for high-quality documentaries, among others the nature-film-oscar nominated movie Jip und Jep – zwei Affen auf dem Highway.
At the peak of his fame, he withdrew from public. Years of wandering. Matthies traveled to the German zoos and established himself as an author for zoo catalogues. In Berlin, he met Ray's kin, an acquaintance which inspired him to write the novel Ausgefressen.