Andy Willoughby is a poet and playwright who lives in Durham in the North East of the UK, and has developed deep links with Estonia over the years, first visiting in 2009, five years after meeting Kristiina Ehin in Siberia at a Finno-Ugric literary conference, which he was invited to by Finnish poets. Andy has a long history of performing and working on exchange/translation projects with Finnish poets, after first performing in Finland in 2000 at the DBTL festival in Turku. This led to him touring in 2011 with Finnish, English and Estonian writers, and musicians from the UK, Finland, Karelia and Estonia – including Santa Karhu and Aapo Ilves – which led to a legendary final performance in the Paper Museum at Crazy Tartu in October of that year when he says he fell in love with the city with it’s poets, singers and the Mother River and the Devil’s and Angel’s bridges on Toome Hill. He has since performed at Prima Vista and Crazy Tartu on many occasions, was a very proactive UNESCO Writer in Residence in Tartu in 2019, giving many readings and workshops, including some in Tallinn. He has been Poet Laureate of his hometown, Middlesbrough, a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, a Slam Poetry Coach with Apples and Snakes and still works with poetry in educational and social settings, specialising in working with hard-to-reach groups. His books include “Tough”, “Sampo: Heading Further North” (w. Bob Beagrie) and “Between Stations”, which was translated into Estonian and Finnish by Kersti Unt and Kalle Niinikangas and was republished in hardback form in 2024 by Enostone in Helsinki. He often works collaboratively with multimedia artists and musicians.

Andris Kalnozols (1983) is a Latvian playwright and writer. His plays have been staged at the Latvian National Theatre, Dirty Deal Teatro, and Ģertrūdes ielas teātris. Kalnozols has been involved in creative writing since 1999, publishing in “Literatūra un Māksla”, “Pedvāles burtnīca III”, and the online magazine “Satori”.

Together with classmates from the Drama and Puppet Theatre Department of the Academy of Culture, Kalnozols founded the puppet theatre society for adults, Umka, in 2005, taking care of the quality of literary material there until 2012. From 2008 to 2017, he wrote and produced several pieces for the theatre: the one-act play “Lielā iela”, the play “Novakare. Kopsavilkums”, diploma work “Labākais cilvēks Tahkurannā”, which was awarded the main “Patriarha rudens” prize in 2013, and the play “Mazie jautājumi”. These were followed by “Benzīnvīrs”, “Aizvakar vienmēr”,  “Koku opera” at the Sansusi festival, and “Traktopera”. In 2015, the art publication “Popper” included Kalnozols’s prose text “Tava pēdējā odiseja Ziemeļkurzemē, Kalnozol!”.

At the end of 2020, Kalnozols’s debut novel “Kalendārs mani sauc” (“Call me Calendar”) was published by Orbīta in the “Orbītas bibliotēka” series.