RICHARD WRIGHT (1908 - 1960) is one of the great American storytellers of our time. He was born in Mississippi, where his father was a mill and farm worker. When the father left his family and the mother fell ill, the boy was sent to live with relatives. He went to school in Jackson, where his aunt taught. After he left school he worked at several jobs and moved northward to Chicago, where he became a clerk in a post office. He started writing early in his life and traveled widely in Mexico, the Gold Coast (later Ghana), and Europe, where he spent his last years in Paris.

Holly-Jane Rahlens, a born New Yorker, grew up in Brooklyn and Queens and graduated from Queens College. She moved to Berlin soon after where she has lived virtually all her adult life. While remaining an American citizen, she has flourished in the German media world, working in radio, television and film as an actress, producer, and commentator, and creating a series of highly-praised one-woman-shows. She has written two novels for adults, BECKY BERNSTEIN GOES BERLIN and MAZEL TOV IN LAS VEGAS.

Krystyna Kuhn, born in Würzburg in 1960, studied Slavic, German and art history in both Moscow and Krakow. She worked as an editor and wrote novels, poems and short stories. Since 1998 she has worked as a freelance writer and she mainly writes crime and thriller novels. Krystyna Kuhn lives with her husband and daughter near Frankfurt.

Minette Walters is a well-known crime writer whose first novel, The Ice House, won the Crime Writer's Award for the best novel in 1992. The daughter of an army officer, Minette spent the first ten years of her life moving between army bases in the north and south of England. She was sent to boarding school in Salisbury at the age of 12, and this had a great influence on the rest of her life, making her independent and ambitious. During a gap year between school and university, she worked in Israel on a kibbutz and in various institutions in Jerusalem.

Elsegret Ruge I was born in Germany in 1950. I like to travel and I have seen a lot of the World. Currently I live in a little village near the city Kiel. From 1960 to 1976 I lived in Munich. I often go back to Munich to visit friends, and to visit the "Deutsche Museum".

Elsegret Ruge I was born in Germany in 1950. I like to travel and I have seen a lot of the World. Currently I live in a little village near the city Kiel. From 1960 to 1976 I lived in Munich. I often go back to Munich to visit friends, and to visit the "Deutsche Museum".