Senthuran Varatharajah, born 1984 in Jaffna / Sri Lanka, studied philosophy, protestant theology and cultural science in Marburg, Berlin and London and is currently doing his PhD on the concept of foreignness in classical German philosophy. His debut novel „Vor der Zunahme der Zeichen“, a poetic dialog about asylum and space, will be released at the Leipzig Book Fair (S. Fischer).
Insa Wilke, born in Bremerhaven 1978, is a journalist, literary critic and presenter. Between 2010 and 2012 she was the director of the Literaturhaus Köln. She wrote among others for the Süddeutsche Zeitung and she also belongs to the team of the radio-literature-program „Gutenbergs Welt“ (WDR3). Her work „Flüchtlingsgespräche“, which she organized together with the Literaturhaus Stuttgart in 2015, gained nationwide acknowledgement. Insa Wilke was awarded the Alfred-Kerr-Preis für Literaturkritik in 2014.