Basma Abdel Aziz is a psychiatrist, writer, and sculptor. A long-standing vocal critic of government oppression in Egypt, she is the author of several works of nonfiction. In 2016 she was named one of Foreign Policy’s Global Thinkers for her debut novel, The Queue, which was also named to the longlist for the 2017 Best Translated Book Award. She lives in Cairo.

Fouad Laroui is a economist and writer born in 1958 in Oujda, Morocco. Over the past twenty years, Laroui has been consistently building an oeuvre centered around universally contemporary themes: identity in a globalized world, dialogue/confrontation between cultures, and the individual vs. the group. With ten novels and five collections of short stories written in French, plus two collections of poems written in Dutch, a play, many essays and scientific papers (written in French or English), his ongoing ambitious literary output has been recognized with many awards, including the Prix Albert Camus, Prix Mediterranée, Prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle, Grande médaille de la Francophonie de l’Académie française, Prix du meilleur roman francophone, Premio Francesco Alziator (Italy), Samuel-Pallache-Prijs (The Netherlands), and the E. du Perron Prijs (The Netherlands).

Karolina Ramqvist is one of the most influential feminists and writers of her generation in Sweden. She has published several novels—most recently, The White City (Grove Press)—short stories, essays, and criticism; has contributed widely to a range of leading political and literary journals; and is the former editor in chief of Arena magazine. She lives in Stockholm with her husband and children. 

Maria Cabrera is a Catalan poet born in Girona in 1983. She teaches Catalan Linguistics in the University of Barcelona and works as proofreader for many publishing houses. As a poet, she has published three books: Jonàs (Jonah), which in 2004 received the Amadeu Oller Prize for young unpublished authors; La matinada clara (Bright Morning, 2010); and in 2017, La ciutat cansada (Tired City), for which she has just won the Carles Riba prize, considered the most prestigious Catalan poetry award.