Amanda Michalopoulou is one of Greece's most successful and productive young writers. She has published six novels, two short story collections, a collection of e-mail correspondence and many children books.
The entire panoply of post-modernism is present in her prose; intertextual references, narrators who introduce and comment on other narratives, the inclusion of other texts purportedly taken from articles and stories within stories. Her novels explore the role of the writer, the influence of the past, the reliability of the text. Despite unconventional structures and her penchant for the surreal her books address the traditional subject matter of the novel, that is the arena of the heart.
Michalopoulou has received the literary award of Revmata magazine for her short story ?Life is colourful out there? (1994) and the Diavazo literary award for her highly acclaimed novel ?Wishbone memories?(1996). Prominent critics describe her books as ?ingenious, kaleidoscopic delightful novels writen with fervor and technique? and ?colorful iridescent literary games?. Her novels have been published in English, German, Italian, Swedish, her short stories also in English, French, Serbian, Russian, Spanish, Katalan, Korean and Czech.
Michalopoulou won the International Literature Prize by National Endowment for the Arts, USA, for the American translation of her book "I'd like". Her last novel, ""How to Hide" was published in 2010.
In 2004 she was a DAAD Fellow in Berlin, Germany. She has been in various writers residencies such as Solitude in Germany, La Napoule in France, Edward Albee Foundation, Blue Mountain Center and Djerassi in USA.
Zac O' Yeah is a Swedish writer born in Finland, and currently living in India. His fiction and nonfiction – which includes the genres of detective and thriller fiction, cultural travelogues, history and biography – draws deeply on his cross-cultural influences and his travels across the globe.
Zac started out working at an avant-garde theatre in Gothenburg – the harbor town setting for his futuristic cult detective novel Once Upon A Time in Scandinavistan (Hachette India 2010; originally published as Tandoori?lgen in 2006). He also toured in Europe with a pop group, until he retired early at the age of 25 and went to India.
He has taught creative writing, published literary criticism in major Swedish and Indian newspapers, and translated and introduced Indian writers such as Pankaj Mishra and Bankim Chandra Chatterjee to Swedish readers. He has traveled widely – from Iceland to southern Africa, San Francisco to Sydney. He has slept in caves in the Himalayas, lectured in Zimbabwe and caught pneumonia in Bethlehem.
Zac O'Yeah has written twelve books in Swedish, many of them important bestsellers – such as the Gandhi biography Mahatma! which was short-listed for the prestigious August Prize 2008 for best nonfiction book of the year.
Forthcoming in the winter of 2012/2013 is the exotic new thriller Mr. Majestic! (Swedish title: Operation Sandalwood), the first in a quartet set in India. He is also involved as a screenwriter in a vegetarian horror movie project.
Books by Zac O'Yeah have been published in translation in English, Danish and Norwegian. Over the years, he's been awarded several stipends and fellowships by the Swedish Authors' Fund, and the Swedish Artists' Fund. He was most recently Writer-in-Residence at the Artur Lundkvist House (Sweden), and this year he is part of the Shanghai Writers' Program, China. He is married to the Indian novelist and poet Anjum Hasan.
