Danez Smith
Danez Smith was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. As a poet, performer and cultural critic, their work transcends arbitrary boundaries to present art that is gripping, dismantling of oppression constructs, and striking on the human heart. Smith is the writer of four collections including Don’t Call Us Dead, Homie, and, most recently, Bluff. They are also the curator of Blues in Stereo: The Early Works of Langston Hughes. For their work, Danez has won the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry, the Lamda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and have been a finalist for the NAACP Image Award in Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the National Book Award, as well as an array of grants, fellowships and residencies including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Princeton Arts Fellowship. Smith teaches at the Randolph College MFA program and the Black Youth Healing Arts Center in St. Paul, and lives in Minneapolis with their people.
Maja Jantar
Maja Jantar is an interdisciplinary, multilingual and polysonic artist living in Isokyrö, Finland, whose work spans the fields of voice, the audio visual, ceramics, poetry, performance, opera and visual arts. In creating connections and engaging with the more than human, she is interested in hybrid forms, ecology and the arts as a form of ritual. She has performed individually and collaboratively throughout Europe, Canada, the United States and Japan, experimenting with poetic sound works since 1996. Her visual work has been shown in various venues in Europe, such as Arts Centre Wiels in Brussels and Palais de Tokyo in Paris. 2025 includes a solo exhibition at Maker’s Gallery, Vaasa (FI), and Stundars Museum (FI). In 2026 she will be directing “Raoul, Barbe Bleu” an opera by Grétry, at the Schloss Rheinsberg Festspiele (DE).
Stephen James Smith
Stephen James Smith, born in Dublin, is an Irish poet, writer, performer, playwright and educator. His short poetry films have captivated millions, earning them the opportunity to perform alongside notable names like Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam), Patti Smith, Shane MacGowan, Bono (U2), Imelda May, and Glen Hansard. With close to 1000 gigs worldwide over the past 20 years, in locations from Ballydehob to Bangkok, and significant performances at venues like Glastonbury, the Radio City Music Hall, New York, the Nuyorican Poetry Cafe, the Centre Culturel Irlandais (Paris), and the Barbican and Palladium (London). Stephen has demonstrated a commanding presence on the stage. As a record artist, Stephen’s work has been lauded both nationally and internationally, leading to Stephen being dubbed “Dublin’s unofficial poet laureate.” His creations have been extensively published, translated into eight languages, and have received numerous awards and nominations. Stephen also makes regular contributions to Irish TV and radio cultural programmes. Acknowledging that success is a blend of luck, hard work, and subjectivity, Stephen invites you to form your own opinion about their work.
Konstantinos Papacharalampos
Konstantinos Papacharalampos (Greece, 1988) works across poetry, performance art, digital art, and spatial analysis, based in London. In his works, body and language are related to space and technology, blending mapping techniques with words and sounds, creating hybrid pieces that aim to explore the future. He is particularly interested in exploring existing or imaginative ways where technological developments, the environment, and human rights create or restrict a balance of co-existence. This exploration is a continuous work in progress, and he refers to it as ‘neo-futurism’. He has performed internationally, with works including Kinisis-AB, a Goethe-Institut-supported piece that premiered at MOMus – Experimental Center for the Arts, three commissions for Phillipi Festival, and appearances at the European Poetry Festival in London. He has released five poetry books, including Exchange: a neo-futurist idiom mapping (Hesterglock Press, 2020) and ζεστό σώμα (Koukounari Editions, 2021). His poetry has been featured in anthologies around the world.
Evi Lampropoulou
Evi Lampropoulou was born in Kavala. She has published short stories, poems and three novels by Oxi and Kedros Publications. She has received short story awards. Her work has been translated into English, Italian, German, Macedonian. During her workshop HEART, NOT SHOES, immigrants from Afghanistan wrote poetry. She has also participated in several poetry festivals: ROMANTIC UNIVERSITY (2022), Maison d' Art Contemporain Athènes (MACA) 2016, INTERNATIONAL THESSALIAN POETRY FESTIVAL (2022), ATHENS INTERNATIONAL VIDEO POETRY FESTIVAL (2024). Since 2023, she has been performing and loving it. When she doesn’t write she dances tango.
Hlín Leifsdóttir
Hlín Leifsdóttir is a renowned writer, classical soprano, spoken-word performer and multidisciplinary artist from Iceland “The Land of Sagas,” where poetry has historically served not merely as an art but as a survival mechanism against harsh environmental conditions. A descendant of the legendary Viking poet Egill Skallagrímsson (who famously escaped execution in England through the power of his verse), Hlín has personally experienced poetry’s transformative potential. In our current era, where traditional poetry’s cultural position is increasingly uncertain, she advocates for music and film as vehicles of poetic translation, helping to restore poetry’s universal accessibility—an art form she believes should be everyone’s birthright.
Tasos Sagris
Tasos Sagris is a poet and theater director, born in Athens in 1972. In 1990, he created the band Horror Vacui and the activist group Void Network, with which he continues to be active today, organizing multifaceted interventions in public spaces and international festivals. He is the founder (2008) and artistic director of the international artistic organization Institute for Experimental Arts, through which he has directed significant performances such as "The Maids" by Jean Genet, "Psychosis (4.48 Psychosis)" by Sarah Kane, and "Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka (2019–2025), with support from the Franz Kafka Society foundation in Prague. He has toured Europe, the USA, and Asia with performances, lectures, and concerts of his multimedia/spoken word project with music producer Whodoes. Their video poems have been awarded at international festivals. Their highly anticipated new album is set to be released in the coming months. BOOKS: For Human Love in Western Metropolises (2008), We Are an Image From the Future (AK Press, USA, 2010), From Democracy to Freedom (CrimethInc., USA, 2017), Phenomenology of the Guillotine (2018), The Ocean of Time (2025). DISCOGRAPHY: Horror Vacui – Desire (1994), Phenomenology of the Guillotine with Whodoes (2019)
Whodoes
Whodoes is an award-winning Athenian composer and musician specializing in experimental, electronic, and film music. His diverse portfolio includes compositions for theatrical performances, documentaries, dance productions, and poetry readings. He has collaborated on recordings and remixes with numerous artists across genres and performed at venues throughout Greece, Germany, and England. Under the nickname Whodoes, he has released nine acclaimed ambient electronica , techno and spoken word records. His ongoing creative partnership with Greek poet and director Tasos Sagris has produced internationally recognized work, including their video poem “The Life We Live Is Not Life Itself” (directed by acclaimed Australian video artist Ian Gibbins), which received awards at film and poetry festivals in the USA, India and Mexico and has been screened at video poetry events across twenty-four countries.
The Bad Poetry Social Club
The Bad Poetry Social Club is an innovative artistic collective exploring spoken word and poetry in all its forms. The group comprises five dynamic poets: P.I.E.V., A. Epitheti, Fâné, Vina Sergi, and MFS. They actively organize and participate in poetry performances and spoken word events, producing video poetry and self-publishing a variety of poetry zines and books. Beyond poetry, they’ve engaged in theater as writers, directors and actors.
They’ve collaborated with renowned art venues in Athens, participated in numerous festivals, and presented their work across Greece and internationally. As a collective, they continuously experiment with new ways to present their poems, texts, and prose, pushing the boundaries of poetry and revitalizing it as a contemporary art medium.
Alev Adil
Dr Alev Adil FRSA is a multidisciplinary artist, poet, and coach whose work explores memory, mythology, displacement, and the embodied experience of trauma. Her practice spans poetry, photography, performance, installation, and film, and is held in major collections including the State Collection of Cyprus. She has exhibited at institutions such as Tate Britain, the British Museum, and the Leventis Gallery. She completed her coaching education at the University of Cambridge and is accredited by the Association for Coaching, Alev integrates creative practice with resilience coaching. Her approach uses creative expression as a pathway to transformation, integration, and healing. Holding a PhD in multimedia poetics, she works across languages and forms to help individuals process experience through metaphor, image, and story. Alev’s workshops offer a space for renewal, inspiration, creative disruption, and emotional transformation—centering the body and imagination as vital tools for catharsis and connection.
Fisherwomxn
Fisherwomxn is a group of cultural workers based in Cyprus, working across writing, publishing and performance. Our work started with the publishing of a literary journal that aims to narrate our collective concerns through personal writings. We wrote and read to each other around topics that we would not address on our own. Anchoring ourselves in feminist and anti-colonial literature, we seek to find ways of understanding each other, beyond geographical borders, allowing for study to become a space which can hold all others.
Alexandros Adamidis
Alexandros Adamidis was born in 1980 in Limassol and studied Marine Engineering at the Higher Technological Institute. After completing his military service, he worked as a third engineer on Greek ships until he disembarked and lived abroad for several years. He made his debut in the field of fiction in 2013 with the book Η Πληρότητα και η Αυτάρκεια, which received the State Award for Emerging Writers. In 2023, he wrote the play Σπίτι Χωρίς Φυλακές, which was presented as a staged reading at Synergeio theater.
Stelios Andronikou
Stelios Andronikou was born in Limassol in 1982. He graduated from the Drama School of National Theater of Northern Greece in 2006. Among many more he has participated in the following productions: King Lear (dir. S. Livathinos), Julian the Apostate (dir. N. Tsakiroglou), Euripides’ Heracleidae (dir. D. Konstantinidis), The Knights by Aristophanes (dir. G. Armenia), Helen by Euripides and Generation Gap (dir. L. Tsagas), A Piece of Monologue by S. Beckett (dir. M. Chrysochoidou), The Body by Louis Alfa (dir. E. Dimitropoulou), Guardian of Ruins by A. Trainos (dir. I. Kounelas). Cinema: Don’t Leave (dir. A. Pantazoudis), The Lover (dir. M. Kyriakou), The Nannies by G. Skourtis (dir. A. Florides). In 2023, he directed the play Jonathan Livingston Seagull for the Cyprus Theatre Organisation. He lives and works in Limassol.
Maria Philippou
Maria Philippou is a Cyprus-based actress and cultural producer working across performance and production. With a foundation in theatre acting, she has taken on roles in production management, project coordination, and workshop facilitation. She is the founder of Side Effect Productions, through which she has created and produced theatre for adult and teenage audiences. She is current;y developing creative workshops for children that combine theatre games, movement, creative writing, and shadow puppetry.
Maria works as Grants and Programs Manager at the MeMeraki Artist Residency in Limassol and continues to collaborate as a freelance production manager with theatre practitioners across Cyprus. She also serves on the board of ASSITEJ Cyprus, contributing to the development of theatre for young audiences.
This is the first time she is presenting her own writing.
Tuğçe Tekhanlı
Tuğçe Tekhanlı was born in 1990 in Nicosia, Cyprus. She is an award-winning poet, dancer and translator. She writes in Turkish and English. She completed an MA in Creative Writing at Dublin City University in 2022. She has two poetry collections. In 2016, she was awarded with Cyprus Writers’ Union poetry award for her first poetry collection - Derindim İnandırıldım Aksine (I Was Deep, But I Was Convinced Otherwise). It was published along with its Greek translation. Her latest Dalgalara İsim Verdik (We Named the Waves) was published in 2023. Her poems are featured in many international literary magazines including Abridged, Cyphers, Skylight47, and The Seventh Quarry. Her poems were translated into Spanish, Irish, English, German, Latvian, Czech, Greek, Romanian, Italian, and Persian. Recently in 2025, she participated in Cork International Poetry Festival, European Poetry Festival and Hausacher Leselenz Festival. She is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Contemporary Dance. She creates contemporary dance choreographies inspired by her poetry.
Kalia Maliali
Kalia Maliali is a Cypriot-born interdisciplinary performance artist, poet and ritualist. She trained in Dance and holds an MFA in Choreography and Performance. For over a decade, she has created and directed works for stage, screen, and site-specific settings. Her practice weaves movement, voice, text, and elemental transmissions to explore the imaginary and the politics of presence. Through her performances, she seeks to evoke unfiltered, direct experiences that play with expectations and open new ways of sensing and relating to what remains unknown. Her work has been presented across diverse creative platforms and festivals in Europe and Asia.
Anastasia Melandinou
Anastasia Melandinou is a graphic and motion designer from Greece with an artistic direction in creating motion narratives and typographic explorations with new technologies. She has been awarded twice with the Greek design award (EBGE) in the section of experimental design, has created her own tools with coding to push design limits further and is always interested in combining typography with other technologies in order to create visual engagement.
Maria Kyriakou
Maria Kyriakou is a theatre director based in Cyprus. She is also a co-founder of Omada One/Off (2006-2024), a devised theatre ensemble. In addition to her devised work with the ensemble, she has collaborated with many theatre companies in Cyprus, including Cyprus Theatre Organization, A Vendre Theatre Group, Satiriko Theatre, ETHAL, Versus Theatre and Fresh Target Theatre, directing plays by Sophocles, John Osborne, Edward Bond, Heiner Muller, Claudio Tolcachir, Andrew Bovell and Harold Pinter, among others. In 2015 she received the Best Director Award at the Cyprus Theatre Awards (2013-14) for the play «Stallerhof» by Franz Xavier Kroetz. She has also translated works in Greek and English and has collaborated with Croatian Theatre Company ShadowCasters, in various artistic projects.
Freedom Candlemaker
Freedom Candlemaker is a visionary artist and multi-instrumentalist whose work blends atmospheric rock, dream pop, and avant-garde textures to create a sound that transcends traditional genre boundaries. With his latest album Ageless, he invites listeners on a self-discovery, personal growth, and healing, exploring themes of vulnerability, transformation, and the shedding of societal illusions.
Defined by continuous artistic growth, Freedom Candlemaker’s music speaks to its unwavering commitment to both creative innovation and personal discovery. His ability to blend introspective lyrics with expansive soundscapes has earned him recognition as a pioneering artist. With each new release, he offers listeners an immersive experience that resonates emotionally and intellectually, charting his path toward authenticity.
