Willemijn Lamp is the co-founder and artistic director of Read My World. She has worked as a freelance curator for a variety of festivals: the international literature festival in The Hague, Writers Unlimited (Winternachten), the Opening of the cultural season in Utrecht (Het Uitfeest), Dutch Theatre Festival and Amsterdam World Book Capital.

Marije Koens has worked for a variety of cultural organizations, including the house of poets Perdu, spoken word platform Poetry Circle Nowhere, educational organisation School der Poëzie and ensemble for new music Asko | Schönberg. She specializes in contemporary poetry, loves gardening and has one child.

Chadiedja Buijs was born and raised in Alkmaar and has been travelling around the world since she was seventeen. For two years she studied liberal arts and sciences in Rome and collaborated with the American Embassy in Vatican City. She has also worked  in the visual arts scene in Cairo after which she specialized in contemporary Islamic cultures at Leiden University,

Since October 2018, she has worked as a project manager and editor in Amsterdam, at Read My World, but also at Adelheid + Zina and as a scout at the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts.

Fatma Bulaz is a programmer, coordinator and researcher. She studied Cultural and Social Education at in The Hague and Middle East Studies in Leiden. In the past few years she has traveled along the borders of Eastern Turkey, including in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Iran. Her fascination with the history, language and culture of that region has led her to become program coordinator of the Freedom Book Fair.

She is currently a project officer for the 20th edition of Arab Film Festival and a volunteer for the NGO The Hague Peace Projects.

Canan Marasligil is a feminist writer, artist, literary translator, editor, podcaster and cultural programmes curator based in Amsterdam.

Canan’s interest is in challenging official narratives and advocating freedom of expression through a wide range of creative projects and activities, and to tell stories on paper, on stage, on screen using a wide range of media. She is a programme curator at the international literature festival Read My World and has a.o. initiated the Performative Translator’s programme for the festival.

More:

www.cananmarasligil.net

www.cityintranslation.com

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Lisanne Snelders (1988) is an editor and programmer with an interest in the intersections of literature, politics and society. She has been involved with Read My World Festival since the beginning. In 2018, she obtained her PhD from the University in Amsterdam, with a dissertation on the politics of cultural memory of the former colony Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). At the moment, she also works as an editor at de Nederlandse Boekengids (The Dutch Review of Books) and at Brainwash.

Photo: Karin van der Wiel

Sophia Bleed is a writer, spoken word artist and programmer. She studied Modern Dutch Literature in Leiden with a focus on postcolonial literature. In 2017 she founded the platform Stories of Womanhood with which she offers performers a stage to tell personal stories through  arts. In her work she always tries to positively discuss social problems through art and culture.

She has been involved in Read My World as a campaign leader since 2020.

Olivier Willemsen is a writer. He has been working for Read My World since 2017.

Website

Merel grew up in the East of the Netherlands and moved to Utrecht to study Art and Economics at the HKU. She graduated in 2017 after which she started working as a freelancer in the cultural sector. She is production manager at various theater companies, sets up her own theater projects, is business leader at iona & rineke and produces Read My World.

Rik van der Veen has worked as theater technician for many years. He has been our head of technics since the very first edition.

LABland is a collective formed by three scenographs: Juul Dekker, Sofie Doeland and Roos Matla. Together they make installations on location. They search for undiscovered places, forgotten or out of function. As a collective they transform these existing places, through unfolding or unwrapping them.

Bureau O4 designs and builds clean clear websites for many (cultural) companies. For example Slaa.nl