Geoffrey E. Taylor: Photo © festivalofauthors.ca

Geoffrey E. Taylor has been a key player with the International Festival of Authors (IFOA) for almost thirty years. As the Festival’s Director for the past fifteen years, he travels the world bringing the best authors home to Toronto, as well as promoting Canadian literature abroad. He is a founding member of Word Alliance, an alliance of eight major international literary festivals. The Republic of France has conferred on him the distinguished honourof Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Knight in the Order of Arts and Letters).

John O’Brien, USA, Ireland

John O’Brien: Photo © personal archive

John O’Brien is the founder and publisher of Dalkey Archive Press. He is the author of the ground-breaking Interviews with Black Writers and has published numerous scholarly articles, reviews and articles in magazines and newspapers. He has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle, the Carey­Thomas Publishers Weekly Publisher of the Year Award, the Distinguished Service Award by the Literature Translation Institute of Korea, and the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de la République Française.

Daniela Kocmut,  Austria, Slovenia

Daniela Kocmut: Photo © Alexandra Hüttner

Daniela Kocmut was born in 1980 in Maribor, Slovenia, but after 1991 she moved to Austria. Since 1999 she has lived in Graz as a literary translator and co-editor of the literary journal LICHTUNGEN. She is a member of the Kulturvermittlung Steiermarkcultural society. She studied German and Translation Studies in Graz and in Dublin. Since 2004 she has published many literary translations (of such authors as Drago Jančar, Maruša Krese, Katarina Marinčič, Veno Taufer, Marjan Tomšič, Zofka Kveder, and Stanka Hrastelj); she also writes poetry. She has received various translation stipends and was recognized in 2013 with the Literaturpreis der Steiermärkischen Sparkasse for her first poetry collection, zwiesprachig(2013) and in 2015 withthe Lirikonov zlát.