Xavier Minguez-Lopez is Associate Professor in the Department of Didactics of Language and Literature at the University of Valencia. He conducted his Phd on Interculturality in Catalan Literature for Children and Young People. He was Researcher at Yokohama National University in Japan where he carried on a research on comprehension of Japanese animation, and also in the International Youth Library in Munich. His other lines of research are Children’s Literature, Literary Education and Animation. He has published more than a dozen of books for children. He is co-director of the Journal of Literary Education.

Peter Hunt (born 1945) is a British scholar who is Professor Emeritus in English and children’s literature at Cardiff University, UK.Hunt was a pioneer of the academic study of children’s literature as a literary, rather than educational, discipline at university level, and ‘he has been instrumental in creating a world network of those whose research concerns are located in this domain’. The courses that he ran at Cardiff from 1985 were the first of their kind in the UK. He has lectured on children’s literature at over 150 universities, colleges and to learned societies in 23 countries, and over the past few years he has been Visiting Professor at Trinity College, Dublin, Università Ca’Foscari Venice, Newcastle University and Hollins University, Roanoke VA, USA.He has written or edited 26 books and over 500 papers, reference book entries, and reviews on the subject. His books have been translated into Arabic, Chinese, Danish, Greek, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Portuguese (Brazil) and Serbian. In 1995 he was given the Distinguished Scholarship Award from the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, and in 2003 the Brothers Grimm Award for services to children’s literature, from the International Institute for Children’s Literature, Osaka.

Petros Panaou is Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Georgia, Department of Language and Literacy Education, where he teaches children’s literature and literacy courses and coordinates the online Master in Reading Education program. Along with Janelle Mathis, Petros is the current editor of Bookbird. He chairs the annual Georgia Conference on Children’s Literature and was also chair of the scientific committee for the 36^th International IBBY Congress. Petros has also served on several national and international boards and committees, including the USBBY Board and the Newbery Award Committee. He has authored a book and articles and book chapters on global children’s literature. He has translated two academic volumes and led multiple international grants.

Alain Belmond Sonyem is a lecturer in German-language literature and civilizations at the ENS-Yaoundé and, in parallel, researches transnational circulations of racism-discourses at the University of Leipzig. He has been researching German-language children’s and youth literature for twenty years and has already published numerous articles and three monographs, including the book “Children’s and Youth Literature as a Counter-Discourse?” published in 2018 by Peter Lang. Dr Sonyem is a member of the Society for Children’s and Young People’s Literature Research and recipient of the AGNES (African-German Network for Excellence in Science) Award for Junior Researchers 2018. He is also a writer of novels for children and young people.

 Philip W. Nel (born March 29, 1969) is an American scholar of children’s literature and University Distinguished Professor of English at Kansas State University. He is best known for his work on Dr. Seuss and Harry Potter, which has led to him being a guest on such media programs as CBS Sunday Morning,  NPR‘s Morning Edition, Talk of the Nation, and CNN’s Don Lemon Tonight.Philip W. Nel was born on March 29, 1969, in Massachusetts. He received his B.A. from the University of Rochester in 1992, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in 1993 and 1997, respectively. 

Christopher (Kit) Kelen is a poet, painter and recovering academic, resident in the Myall Lakes of NSW. Published widely since the seventies, he has a dozen full length collections in English as well as translated books of poetry in Chinese, Portuguese, French, Italian, Spanish, Indonesian, Swedish and Filipino. His next volume of poetry is Poor Man’s Coat – Hardanger Poems, to be published by UWAP in 2018. In 2017, Kit was shortlisted twice for the Montreal Poetry Prize and won the Local Award in the Newcastle Poetry Prize. Emeritus Professor at the University of Macau, where he taught for many years, in 2017, Kit Kelen was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Malmö, in Sweden.

 Dr. Roberta Seelinger Trites is Distinguished Professor of English Emerita at Illinois State University, where she taught children’s and adolescent literature from 1991-2022, while also filling several administrative roles. She is a past president of the Children’s Literature Association and edited the ChLA Quarterly (2000-2004). The ChLA awarded her with its lifetime achievement award, the Anne Devereaux Jordan Award, in 2023. Trites is the author of Waking Sleeping Beauty: Feminist Voices in Children’s Novels (1997), Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature (2000), Twain, Alcott, and the Birth of the Adolescent Reform Novel (2007), Literary Conceptualizations of Growth: Metaphors and Cognition in Adolescent Literature (2014), and Twenty-First Century Feminisms in Children’s and Adolescent Literature (2018). With Betsy Hearne, she has also co-edited A Narrative Compass: Stories That Guide Women’s Lives (2009). She and her co-author Sean P. Connors have a book forthcoming from the University Press of Mississippi in 2025: Neoliberalism in Young Adult Fiction: Exceptionalism, Exploitation, and Erasure.

About the author: Akkram Iranshahi, born in 1978, graduated from Tehran University. She is a university lecturer and writer for children and adolescents. She has written many beautiful stories for children and teenagers. Her area of interest in writing is about children’s behavior, conduct problems in children and Sensitivity education.

About the author: Farhad Hassanzadeh was born in 1962. He is one of the famous and popular writers for children and youth. Whose fame has been reaching to other countries and his books have been translated into non-Persian languages too. He has won many book awards, including several Iran’s Book of the Year Awards. He was the Iranian nomination for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in 2017 and 2018. He was a runner-up in the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2018 and finally received the diploma in the award ceremony in Athens, Greece. His novel Hasti has won several awards: winner in the Festival that teens judged, the Silver Sign award of the Flying Turtle Festival and the best book of the year on behalf of Children’s Book Council. He was among the top 6 writers selected for Hans Christian Andersen award and brought its appreciation plate back to his home country of Iran. In June 2022, He has been nominated to receive the 2023 Astrid Lindgern Memorial Award.

About the author: Hamidreza Shahabadi was born in 1967. He is one of the famous and popular writers for children and youth. Whose fame has been reaching other countries and his books have been translated into non-Persian languages too. In addition to the numerous awards he has received for his books, including the International Library of Munich Book of Choice and a nomination for the 2023 Astrid Lindgren Award.

About the author:  Laleh Jafari was born in Isfahan on 1966. She is one of the famous and popular writers for children and youth. She received numerous awards including»:Hello children« year book ,The book of the» Year of Growth «in (several courses),The selected message of the 100th anniversary of Hans Christian Andersen in 2005 and other awards.

About the author: Mostafa Rahmandoost was born in 1950. He is one of the famous and popular writers for children and youth. Whose fame has been reaching to other countries and his books have been translated into non-Persian languages too. He is also nominated for the 2016 Astrid Lindgren Award.

About the author:Tahereh Eybod was born in 1963 in Shiraz. She is a writer, satirist, researcher, critic, screenwriter, journalist and lecturer of story writing workshops. She received numerous awards including: Broken Branch, the best work of fiction, Literature Festival of the Ministry of Culture, Garden in a Pot, selected work, Book Festival of the Year, Soroush for Adolescents Magazine, Mr. Charkheshi’s Family, Selected for the White Ravens list by International Youth Library in Munich, Germany, 2005  and other awards.

About the author:  Gudrun Wiebke, in Detmold geboren, wuchs in Norddeutschland zwischen Jadebusen, Nordsee und Wesermündung auf. Seitdem liebt sie das Wasser, grüne Weiden und vor allen Dingen die schwarz-weiß gefleckten Kühe. Sie arbeitete in unterschiedlichen Berufen, begann als Lehrerin, danach als Postbotin, Lektorin, … bevor sie sich dem Schreiben zuwandte. Nach vielen Jahren zog sie zurück nach Detmold. Sie schreibt für Erwachsene und Kinder, weil für sie Alt und Jung, Groß und Klein ein Ganzes bilden. Denn: Ohne Erwachsene keine Kinder. Ohne Kinder keine Zukunft. Sie hat einen Ehemann, zwei erwachsene Söhne und vier Enkeltöchter. Die noch kleinen Kinder schenken viel Freude, bereiten ihr aber auch manchmal Sorgen, wenn sie zusehen muss, dass es nicht immer leicht ist, ein Kind zu sein.

About the translator: Mostafa Narimani,  ist 1977 im Iran geboren und hat in Isfahan Deutsch mit Schwerpunkt Übersetzung studiert. Er ist 2011 nach Deutschland gezogen und dort an der Uni des Saarlandes sein Masterstudoum für das Fach Deutsch als Fremd- und Zweitsprache absolviert. Er arbeitet jetzt in Saarbrücken als DaZ- Lehrer in Grundschule und ist auch gleichzeitig als Übersetzer tätig.