Radovan Auer

Working for 25 years in cultural sector; his passion for literature led him through music bands management and booking, film producing, film distribution, marketing of European Capital of Culture Pilsen 2015 to the organizing of the biggest book industry event in Czech Republic. He is also active as the advisor of Minister of Culture and member of the Czech Literary Center board.

French writer, journalist, scriptwriter, and documentary filmmaker.
Based in Sweden since 1994, he has been a correspondent for Le Monde in the Nordic and Baltic countries. In 2022, he carried out two missions to Ukraine working on new grain export routes and life along the demarcation line.
As a writer, he has published non-fictions, crime novels.
As a scriptwriter, he has written comic books, and is developing TV series.
He also produces television documentaries.

Born in 1980, Emmanuel Ruben is the author of a dozen books. He came to Ukraine many times for his studies (geography), from 2007 to 2014. In 2016, he crossed Europe by bike, from Odesa to Strasbourg, and wrote “Sur la route du Danube” (2019, Nicolas Bouvier Prize).
In 2022, he published two books about Ukraine : “Nouvelles ukrainiennes” and “Hommage à l’Ukraine”, a collective volume of 14 Ukrainian authors that he directed with Iryna Dmytrychyn. All fees of both books are donated to NGOs.

Martin Kroupa studied philosophy at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University. Since 2005 he has worked as an editor for Czech Radio of the project Stories of the 20th Century. He has recorded hundreds of stories for Memory of Nations. He has co-authored and curated dozens of exhibitions and exhibition projects. Between 2011 and 2014, he worked at the Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic. In February 2022, he co-founded and coordinated the Help Ukraine with Memory of the Nation collection.

He started his journalist career at TVN24 TV channel. He worked at Gazeta Wyborcza. He received several important awards for his reports covering people’s rights and dictatorial regimes in various countries.

Senior Fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University where he co-directs the Arena Initiative. Peter is an award-winning author specializing in the relationship between propaganda, culture, and society. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, presents documentaries on BBC Radio 4, and previously worked as a TV documentary director and producer for Discovery, the BBC, and others.

The Vice President of the International Publishers Association and the past president of Georgian Publishers and Booksellers Association. She holds the position of the Head of International Affairs at Intelekti Publishing, one of the leading publishing houses in Georgia. In addition, she is a poet and a translator, member of Women Publishers’ International Network — PublisHer and PEN Georgia. In 2013–2022 she was the organizer of Tbilisi International Book Festival.

Irena Karpa is a Paris-based Ukrainian writer, movie scenarist and lead singer of the band QARPA. Her work has been translated into English and French. Columnist for Vanity Fair, Deutsche Welle, Vogue etc. Author of My Story practical course for young writers, Therapeutic Writing in the Time of War, and a curator of writing retreats. During the full-scale war, Karpa often appears in French media advocating for Ukraine.

Eugenia Kuznetsova is a Ukrainian author, translator, and researcher. She was born and spent her childhood in Ukraine, and received her PhD in Spain. Eugenia is an author of two novels and non-fiction book on language in soviet times.

Ostap Slyvynsky is a Ukrainian poet, translator, essayist, and scholar. He authored five books of poetry and “A War Vocabulary”, a documentary book about the Russian aggression against Ukraine. His books have been published in Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Macedonia. Since 2021, he organizes PEN Ukraine’s festival Propysy (The Writings) aimed at novice authors. He was elected the Vice President of PEN Ukraine in 2022.