Dimitri Verhulst (Belgium) is a writer and poet.

Born in 1972, he lives and works in Huccorgne, and

writes in Dutch. He spent his childhood in foster homes and institutes. As a writer, he made his
debut in 1999 with a collection of stories, De kamer hiernaast[The Room Next Door] about his youth.
The novels Niets, niemand en redelijk stil [Nothing, Nobody, and Reasonably Quiet] published in 2000
and De verveling van de keeper [The Boredom of the Goalkeeper] of 2002 also cover the same topic.
In 2001, Dimitri Verhulst published Liefde, tenzij anders vermeld [Love, Unless Otherwise Stated], a
collection of poetry.
His breakthrough came in 2003, with Problemski Hotel in which he wrote about residents of an
asylum-seekers’ centre in Arendonk (Belgium). In 2006 he published the novel De helaasheid der
dingen’ [The Misfortunates] and the novella Mevrouw Verona daalt de heuvel af [Mrs Verona Comes
Down from the Hill]. In 2008 a new book: Godverdomse dagen op een godverdomse bol [Goddamm days
on a goddamm globe] was published, which won the 2009 Libris Prize.

Jacinto Lucas Pires (Portugal) was born in 1974 in Porto. He graduated in law from the Catholic
University of Portugal.
His short story collection Para averiguar do seu grau de pureza (Testing the Degree of Her Purity,
1996) won the Puy Cinatti and the Ruy Belo Prize. He is the author of several plays, a travelogue
Livro usado numa viagem ao Japão (A Book of Travels Around Japan, 2001), a novel Azul-turquesa
(The Turquoise-Blue, 1998) and Do sol (About the Sun, 2004), as well as short story collections
Abre para cá (Open Here, 2000) and Assobiar em público (Whistling in Public, 2008). This collection
of twenty-two stories won the David Mourão-Ferreira Prize for European Literature in 2008.
Pires has also written film scripts and in 1999 he directed “Cinemaamor”, a short film that won the
Santa Maria de Feira Festival Award. His stories have been translated into Spanish, English,
French, Norwegian, and Croatian. Many of his stories were anthologized in Germany, France, Italy,
Brazil, and elsewhere. Pires regularly writes for daily newspapers and magazines. He lives in
Lisbon.

Maja Hrgovic (Croatia) was born in Split in 1980. She studied theatrology and women studies. Since
2003 she has worked as a journalist in the culture section of the Novi List Daily, and from 2005 to
2008 she was a member of the editorial board at Zarez, a Journal of Cultural and Social Affairs,
where she publishes literary reviews. In 2009 she was awarded first prize for journalistic excellence
organized by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN). Her work has also been published
in magazines and news portals such as Nulačetvorka, Cunterview, Kulturpunkt, Op.a, Grazia, and
Libela. She regularly writes for the portal ZaMirZINE, concentrating on women rights and their
treatment in the media. Her first collection of short stories “Pobjeđuje onaj kojem je manje stalo” was
published in 2010.
Gregory Norminton is a writer and environmentalist born in Berkshire, England, in 1976, currently
living in Scotland.
Educated at Wellington College, he read English at Regent’s Park College, Oxford and studied
acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He presently lives in Edinburgh. His
novels include The Ship of Fools (2002), Arts and Wonders (2004), Ghost Portrait (2005) and
Serious Things (2008), all published by Sceptre.
He is also acclaimed as a short story writer, and wrote the stories ‘Fall Caesar’, ‘The Poison Tree’
and ‘The Fortress at Bruges’ for BBC Radio 4, with other stories appearing in editions of Prospect,
Resurgence, London Magazine and Zembla.
Norminton’s work for radio includes dramatisations of ‘The Machine Stops’ by E.M. Forster and ‘Utz’
by Bruce Chatwin. He is an occasional contributor to The Verb on BBC Radio 3. In 2005 he took part
in Planet Action, an eco-reality series made by the global television network Animal Planet in
conjunction with the WWF.
Norminton has been writer in residence at Magdalene College, Cambridge and he was a featured
artist at the 2003 International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He received a Writer’s
Award from the Arts Council of England in 2003.

Bjarte Breiteig (1974) has written three critically acclaimed collections of short stories. His first
book, Fantomsmerter, was published in 1998 and attracted widespread attention and received
glowing reviews. So did his second book, Surrogater, published two years later. In 2003 Bjarte
Breiteig was one of five young authors whose work was included in a collection of short stories
published under the title of Borders by the European literary project Scritture Giovani.
Breiteig’s third collection of short stories, Folk har begynt å banke på (2006), introduced a more epic
dimension in his writing. While probing deep into the hearts and minds of his characters, he reflects
on social class, religioun, and the distances between people who are close to each other.
Bjarte Breiteig’s literary style combines simplicity and density. The stories very often deal with the
experience of loss and longing. Breiteig has won numerous literary awards in his homeland Norway
Evie Wyld is a novelist and short story writer from London, UK. She’s the author of the novel After
the Fire, a Still Small Voice, which is published by Jonathan Cape in the UK. The book won the John
Llewellyn Rhys prize, and a Betty Trask award.
Her published short stories include: ‘What will happen to the dog after we are dead?’, ‘The
Convalescent’s Handbook’, ‘The Building Opposite’, ‘The Whales’, ‘Menzies Meat, ‘Free Swim’, Six
Degrees of Separation,’ and most recently the graphic short story ‘Rodney Fox, I love You’ (with
graphic artist Joe Sumner.