Gino Chiellino, born in Calabria in 1946, has lived in Germany since 1970. As a poet and novelist, he has contributed to the emergence of cross-cultural literature in the German language. To date, he has published 7 collections of poems, including Landschaft aus Menschen und Tagen [Landscape of Men and Days], 2010, and Die Sehnsucht der Seerose nach der Libelle [The Nostalgia of the Dragonfly for the Water Lily], 2018., and the novel Der Engelfotograf – Eine Kindheit in Kalabrien [Angel Photographer – A Childhood in Calabria], 2016. He has received several literary awards, and in 2018 the Viadrina University of Frankfurt s.O. dedicated the Chiellino-Bibliothek and Forschungsstelle für interkulturelle Literatur – The Chiellino Library and Center for Intercultural Literature Studies – to him.

Antonio D’Alfonso, writer, editor, publisher and filmmaker, was born 1953 in Montreal into an Italian family. He grew up speaking Italian and attended both English and French schools and became trilingual. In 1978 he founded Guernica Editions in Montreal as a bilingual publishing house. It was successful in promoting English and French language writers and expanded into publishing authors from ethnic minorities, particularly those of Italian backgrounds. D’Alfonso sold Guernica in 2009. As a writer, he has published works in both English and French, and has won awards in both. He is also a self-translator who rewrites his work from English to French or vice versa.