Poets of Today – Voices of Tomorrow

Anja Zag Golob is a Slovenian poet, editor at VigeVageKnjige publishing house, columnist and translator. So far, she has published 4 independent poetry collections, for which she received 3 awards and 4 nominations. The collections have been translated into 4 languages, and individual songs or cycles into a couple of others. She regularly publishes magazines and is a guest at readings at home and abroad, and lately she has also participated in cross-genre projects (improv music, painting) with her poetry. She lives and works between Ljubljana and Maribor.

Małgorzata Lebda (born 1985) grew up in the Beskid village of Żeleźnikowa Wielka. She is author of six books of poetry, including the award-winning volumes Matecznik (Stanisław Barańczak Scholarship) and Sny uckermärkerów (Gdynia Literary Award 2019). Her latest volume, Mer de Glace, was awarded the Wisława Szymborska Prize and reached the final stage of the Silesius Poetry Prize. Her books have been translated into Serbian, Italian, Ukrainian, Czech and Slovenian. She is an academic, columnist, cultural animator and an  ultramarathon runner. In September 2021, she ran – as a poetic-activist gesture – a distance of 1113 kilometres, running from the source of the Vistula River to its estuary on the Baltic Sea. She is working on her prose debut. She lives in Krakow and increasingly often elsewhere.

Harri Hertell poet, cultural manager, DJ, and organizer of poetry events. He has published seven books of poetry, a non-fiction book about performance poetry, and four spoken word recordings. Hertell’s recent poems have dealt especially with parenthood and with Western people’s relationship to nature. His first poetry book for children will be published in Autumn 2022. His poems have been translated into several languages, and he has performed in many European countries. He also works as a performance poetry instructor. Hertell was awarded with Uusimaa Art Prize in 2021. He has also founded the Helsinki Poetry Connection collective in 2008.

Radmila Petrović grew up in Stupčevići near Arilje. She graduated from the Faculty of Economics in Belgrade, where she also completed her master’s studies. As a laureate of the 42nd Lim Poetry Evenings, she published the collection of poems “Miris zemlje/Scent of the earth” (Dom kulture “Pivo Karamatijević”, Priboj, 2014), and as the winner of the 22nd Poetry Competition “Desanka Maksimović” the collection “Cellulose Rock and Roll” (SKZ and Valjevo Gymnasium, Valjevo, 2015). She is represented in anthologies, domestic and international magazines. She participated in numerous festivals and poetry readings throughout Europe. Her third collection of poetry, “Moja mama zna šta se dešava u gradovima/My Mum Knows What is Happening in the Cities”, published by PPM Enklava in early summer of 2020 and sold over 9,000 copies, was shortlisted for almost all local poetry awards and in the finals of the regional “Stjepan Gulin” award. The same collection was published in Macedonia in two editions, and German and Polish editions are being prepared. Her poetry has been translated into English, French, Greek, Italian, Slovenian, Spanish, Hebrew, Albanian, Bulgarian and other languages. She participated in writing residencies in Skopje (Reading Balkans), Berlin (S. Fischer Stiftung), Vienna (Q21), Prishtina (READ) and Sofia (Traduka).

Márton Simon is a poet, translator and slam poetry performer. He studied aesthetics and literature, and will receive his MSt degree in Japanology in 2023. He has been publishing poems since 2004, and has published four volumes of poetry: Songs for 3:45 AM (2010), Polaroids (2013), Fox Wedding (2018) and At Night in the Kitchen I Wanted to Talk to You (2021). His debut collection was translated to English by Timea Sipos and was published by the Offending Adam Press in the US. He was awarded with various literary prizes and fellowships: Móricz Zsigmond Scholarship (2011), Horváth Péter Literary Scholarship (2019), and the fellowship of Visegrad Literary Residency Program (2017). His poems were translated to German, Polish, Danish, Turkish, Bulgarian and Arabic too. He lives and works in Budapest, Hungary.