Robert Hass
Poet. Born in 1941 in San Francisco (U.S.). Majored in English Literature at Stanford University. He served for two years (1995-7) as Poet Laureate of the United States. Very active as a translator, he has shown great interest in the poets of Asia and is particularly noted for his admiration of the work of the Korean poet Ko Un. He currently teaches English Literature at U.C. Berkeley. He collaborates closely with Gary Snyder and other writers on environmental issues. His books of poetry include Sun Under Wood (1996); Human Wishes (1989), Praise (1979), and Field Guide (1973). He is currently a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets.

蓮實重彦  Shigehiko Hasumi
Critic. Born in Tokyo (Japan) 1936, he majored in French Literature at the University of Paris. He is famed as a film critic, critic of symbolic culture, and specialist in French literature. He has served as a professor in the Faculty of Education, University of Tokyo, head of that faculty, and president of the University of Tokyo, at which he is now an emeritus professor. His publications include The Invention of Mediocrity, Antitheory of the Japanese Language, Mnemonic devices in cinema, and Film lunatics: Here, there, and everywhere. He has deeply influenced major Japanese film directors such as Hideo Nakata, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Shinji Aoyama.

Orhan Pamuk
Novelist. Born in Istanbul (Turkey) in 1952. After studying architecture in Istanbul Technical University, he studied at the Institute of Journalism at Istanbul University. His first novel, Cevdet Bey and his Sons (1982), won the Orhan Kemal Novel Prize. His historical novel The White Castle (1985), extended his reputation abroad. Other works include New Life (1995), My Name is Red (2001), and Snow (2004). His novels are rich with allusion to old Sufi stories and traditional Islamic tales. He has recently published a book about Istanbul, a city that fascinates him. He is by far the country's best-selling author and his books are now translated into 20 languages.

Ngugi Wa Thiong'o
Novelist, essayist, and playwright. Born in Kenya in 1938. He studied English Literature in Kampala (Uganda) then went for graduate studies in England. As a novelist Ngugi made his debut with Weep Not, Child (1964). It was the first novel in English to be published by an East African author. The transition from colonialism to postcoloniality and the crisis of modernity have been central issues in Ngugi's writings, in addition to the conflict between the individual and the community. The River Between (1965) has as its background the Mau Mau Rebellion (1952-1956), as does A Grain Of Wheat (1967). Ngugi was imprisoned without trial for a year in 1978 for his involvement with a communal theatre in his home village. In 1980 Ngugi published the first modern novel written in Gikuyu, Caitaani Muthara-Ini (Devil on the Cross), rejecting the use of English in truly African writing. Ngugi's critical works include Decolonizing the Mind (1986) and Moving the Center (1993). He left Kenya in 1982 to live in self-imposed exile. He is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California at Irvine. Ngugi's books have been translated into more than thirty languages. His novel, Wizard of the Crow, will be published in English translation in 2006.

Margaret DRABBLE
Novelist, biographer and critic. Born in Sheffield (U.K.) in 1939. Studied English at Cambridge. She became an actress and worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon before her first novel, A Summer Birdcage was published in 1963. She has published more than a dozen other novels, including Jerusalem the Golden (1967), The Waterfall (1969), The Needle's Eye (1972), and The Realms of Gold (1975), as well as a trilogy The Radiant Way (1987), A Natural Curiosity (1989) and The Gates of Ivory (1991). After visiting Korea for the first Daesan Writer's Forum in 2000, she wrote and published The Red Queen (2005), inspired in part by the tragic memoirs of an 18th-century Korean crown-princess and in part by the author's experience of modern Korea. She is editor of both the fifth (1985) and the sixth (2000) editions of The Oxford Companion to English Literature. She has traveled widely to speak at events organized by the British Council throughout the world and is active in organizations assisting children with special needs in Cambodia and elsewhere.

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio
Novelist. Born in Nice (France) in 1940, where he did all his studies. In 1963, he published his first novel, Le Proces Verbal (Interrogation), which received the Prix Theophraste Renaudot. Between 1967 to 1970, he mainly lived with a tribe of Embera Indians in the Panamanian jungles. He then taught literature at the University of New Mexico and translated Native American myths. In 1978, he published Mondo et autres histoires (Mondo and other stories). The author of over 30 books, including La fievre (1965, Fever), Le deluge (1966, The flood), L'extase materielle (1967, The material ecstasy), Chercheur d'or (1985, Gold seeker), Desert (1987, Desert) et La quarantaine (1995, Quarantine). His latest novel is Revolutions (2003, Revoluions) He returned to Nice in 1996. During his last visit to Korea in 2000, he visited the temple Unju-sa and wrote a poem on his experience. Other major titles include Trois villes saintes (Three sacred cities), Hasard (Chance), and Poisson d'or (Goldfish).

Luis Sepulveda
Born in Chile in 1949. Imprisoned in 1979 by the Pinochet regime while still a student, for over two years. Exiled, he first traveled in South America, founding theatrical groups in a number of countries, then took part in a UNESCO research project on the impact of colonization on the Amazonian Indians. The result was his first novel, Un Viejo que leia Novelas de Amor (The old man who read love stories). Other works include Diario de un killer Sentimental (Diary of a sentimental killer), Desencuentros (Failed meetings), Nombre de torero (Name of a bullfighter) and Mundo de fin del mundo (World at the end of the world). In 1982, he went to live in Germany, then in 1996 moved to Spain.

Jean Baudrillard
Sociologist, cultural critic, and theorist of postmodernity. Born in 1929 in Reims (France). One of France's leading thinkers and a living legend, he was the first member of his family to attend university. He began to teach at the University of Paris in Nanterre in 1966, and continued to teach in the University of Paris until 1987. Deeply influenced by the student revolution of 1968, he was associated with Roland Barthes, to whose semiotic analysis of culture his first book, The Object System (1968) is clearly indebted. He was also influenced by Marshall McLuhan. Some suggest that his thought has shifted "from the post-Marxist (1968-71), to the socio-linguistic (1972-77), to the techno-prophetic." In recent years he has become best known as prophet of the implosion of meaning that attends the postmodern condition. The two books of Baudrillard's post-Marxist phase, The System of Objects (1968) and Consumer Society (1970) examine the psychological imperatives of consumption in an advanced capitalistic economy. His impatience with Marx bloomed into explicit dissociation in For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (1972) and The Mirror of Production (1973). In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities (1983) argues that contemporary society has entered into a phase of implosion. He presents a new method of analyzing society in his most famous book America (1988). In The Perfect Crime (1996), Baudrillard turns detective in order to investigate a crime which he hopes may yet be solved: the "murder" of reality. Other major titles include Seduction (1979), Simulacra and Simulation (1981). He is currently Professor of Philosophy of Culture and Media Criticism at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland..

Robert Coover
Novelist. Born in Iowa (U.S.) in 1932. At Indiana State University, he studied Slavic languages before moving on for further studies at Southern Illinois State University and the University of Chicago. His first novel, The Origin of Brunists won the 1966 William Faulkner Award. He is widely regarded as one of America's most influential living writers, author of some fifteen groundbreaking books of fiction, including The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. (1968), The Public Burning (1977), Spanking the Maid (1981), A Night at the Movies (1987), Ghost Town (1998) and Stepmother (2004). He has been lauded as an "old school postmodernist." The New York Times Book Review has called him the "master of hypertext." He taught at a number of universities, including the University of Iowa and Brown University.

北島  Bei Dao
Poet He is also the author of short stories and essays. Zhao Zhenkai was born in 1949 in Beijing. His pseudonym Bei Dao, literally, "North Island," was suggested by a friend as a reference to his provenance from Northern China and his typical solitude. He began to write poems at an early age. His early work was a source of inspiration during the April Fifth Democracy Movement of 1976. Writing in free verse, Bei Dao is best known for intensely compressed images and cryptic style. He has been in exile from his native China since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, when he was in Berlin. He first visited Korea in 1990. He has taught at the University of California at Davis. He is currently the Mackey Poet in Residence at Beloit College. Among the English translations of his works are Old Snow (1991), Forms of Distance (1994), Landscape Over Zero (1996), Unlock (2000), Blue House (2000). Midnight's Gate, a collection of essays, has recently been published.

Masao Miyoshi
Thinker and essayist. Emeritus professor, University of California at San Diego, Masao Miyoshi has long been a controversial, prominent figure in Japanese studies and in the American academy in general. Some of his recent work include reflections on the humanities in an increasingly capitalist university. Major works include The Divided Self: A Perspective on the Literature of the Victorians (1969), Accomplices of Silence: The Modern Japanese Novel (1975), As We Saw Them: The First Japanese Embassy to the United States (1979), Postmodernism and Japan (1989). More recently he has mainly published shorter articles or co-edited volumes with multiple contributors. Major recent papers include "Japan Is Not Interesting," (2000), "Ivory Tower in Escrow," (2000), and "Turn to the Planet: Literature, Diversity, and Totality" (2001). He participated in the First Daesan International Forum in 2000.

Erling Kittelsen
Has written poetry, fables and plays, as well as children's books. Born in 1946 in Oslo (Norway), he studied philosophy before published his first volume of poems, Vile fugler (Wild birds, 1970). His writings are not only read but also widely discussed and utilized by other artists, independent theatre groups and students. He is currently involved in a number of projects designed to translate poems written in Chinese, Arabic, Latvian etc into Norwegian. Plays by him include Abiriels løve (Abiriel's lion, 1988) and Pa himmelen (In heaven, 2000).

莫言  Moyan
Novelist. Born as Guan Moye in 1956 in rural Shandong, northeastern China. Has adopted the nom de plume Mo Yan, meaning "don't speak" in Chinese. At the age of 20, he joined the People's Liberation Army. He began writing in 1981 and entered the literature department of the PLA Art Academy in 1984. He has had nine novels and over 70 short stories published in the past 22 years., quite a number of which have been translated into a number of languages. The film version of the novel, Red Sorghum, won first prize in the Golden Bear awards at the Berlin Film Festival in 1988. His writing has gained him a considerable audience not only in China, but overseas, where he is considered one of the most talented and interesting Chinese writers. His most recent work, Forty-one Bombs, (2003) focuses on the problem of modern China's rampant corruption. Here, as in much of his work, he employs sarcastic art and black humor. Works that have been translated include The Garlic Ballads; Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh; The Republic of Wine; and Big Breasts and Wide Bottoms.

Gary SNYDER
Born in 1930 in San Francisco (United States) and brought up in Oregon and Washington State. He received his BA in anthropology at Reed College, Portland, in 1951. Between working as a logger, a trail-crew member, and a seaman on a Pacific tanker, he studied Oriental languages at Berkeley (1953-6), was associated with Beat writers such as Ginsberg and Kerouac, lived in Japan (1956-64), later studied Buddhism there. He now teaches literature and 'wilderness thought' at the University of California at Davis. He has been described as an eco-poet and an eco-warrior. His Mountain and Rivers Without End project was begun on April 8, 1956 and is considered an "epic of geology, prehistory, and mythology." His main publications include: Riprap (1959), Myths & Texts (1960), Mountains and Rivers Without End (1965), Turtle Island (1974), Axe Handles (1983), The Practice of the Wild (1990, prose), No Nature (1993). He won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1975 for Turtle Island, and his No Nature made Snyder a finalist for the National Book Award in 1992. When Snyder published Mountain and Rivers Without End in 1996, he was awarded at least 5 major prizes.

Thomas Brussig
Novelist and dramatist. Born in 1965 in Berlin (Germany). After six years working on construction sites, as a museum porter, dish-washer etc began to study sociology before going on to study drama and film. He is one of Germany's most visible post-unification writers. His first novel, Wasserfarben (Watercolors), was published in 1991 under a pseudonym. His novelistic account of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Helden wie Wir (1995, Heroes Like Us), has been adapted into an award-winning stage play and film, and translated into numerous languages. The film Sonnenallee, based on his novel Am kurzeren Ende der Sonnenallee (1999, At the shorter end of Sun Alley) and for which he wrote the screenplay, became one of the most successful German films of the late 1990s with its touching portrayal of the adolescent experience in East Berlin. The novel Wie es leuchtet (How bright it is), about the fall of the GDR, was published in 2004.

Wolf Biermann
Poet, dramatist, essayist, song-writer, translator. Born in Hamburg (Germany) in 1936. When he was six years old his father was killed in Auschwitz. In 1953 he settled in the GDR and studied Political Economy, Mathematics and Philosophy at Humboldt University, Berlin. He soon began to write poems and songs which did not adhere to the individual demands of Socialism, and drew the attention of the secret police. In 1963 his first play, Berliner Brautgang, was not allowed to be performed. Subsequently, his work could only be published in the West, including his first volumes of poetry Die Drahtharfe (1965, The wire harp) and Mit Marx- und Engelszungen (1968, With the tongues of Marx and of Engels). In 1976, while Biermann was on a concert tour in West Germany, he was deprived of his citizenship. The protest which he thereupon raised is often considered the beginning of the end of the GDR. Biermann is also active as an essayist for different newspapers. The freshness and immediacy of his style also mark his translations from French, Russian, Finnish and English. He has adapted the Yiddish epic Großer Gesang vom ausgerotteten judischen Volk (Great song of the extermionated Jewish people) by Jitzchak Katzenelson, who was killed in Auschwitz. An adaptation of forty of Shakespeare's sonnets will appear shortly. He has been awarded Berlin's Fontane Prize (1969), the Georg Buchner Prize (1991) and the National Prize of the German National Foundation (1998).

Vera Grigorievna Galaktionova
Novelist. Born 1948. Graduated from the Maxim Gorki Literary Institute in Moscow. Her works focus on Chernobyl, on regional disputes such as that in Karabakh (along the frontier between Azerbaijan and Armenia), the divisions within the Rusian spiritual unity of Russia, the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union and hostilities between different ethnic groups, investigating the historical mechanisms underlying these social divisions. Her main works include The Mighty Cross, The Winged House, On Buyan Island, Quiet Night.