Michaël Vandebril

Belgium

Michaël Vandebril (1972) is a Flemish poet who lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium. In 2012, his poetry debut Het vertrek van Maeterlinck / L’exil de Maeterlinck, a collection which appeared immediately in the two most important national languages (Dutch and French). In some poems in this volume he collaborated with other poets including the French Jacques Roubaud and the Romanian Doina Ioanid. In 2016 his second poetry book New Romantics was published. His latest publication is an epic poems of 455 verses on his travels on the Roman Via Appia, Op de weg van Appia. Michaël Vandebril makes part of Versopolis, a European poetry platform that creates new opportunities for European poets. His poems have been translated into several languages. Vandebril is also a literary curator and organizer.

Photo (c) Jeyda Jagiz

Andra Schwarz

Germany

Andra Schwarz (*1982 Oberlausitz) studied art history and German literature at Martin Luther University in Halle and later literary writing at the German Literature Institute in Leipzig. She won the poetry prize at the open mike in 2015 and the Leonce-und-Lena Prize at the Literary March in 2017. She has received scholarships from the Berlin Senate, the Cultural Foundation of Saxony, the Goethe Institute Prague, the Museums Quartier Vienna and the Roger Willemsen Foundation, among others. Most recently, her poetry collection “Tulpa” (poetenladen 2023) and the reading booklet “Meteor” (Sukultur 2023) with poems on (Southern) Eastern Europe were published. She has been a writer-in-residence at the Villa Rosenthal in Jena since November 2024.