DANIJEL DRAGOJEVIĆ (1934-2024) was born in Vela Luka on the island of Korčula, Croatia. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest Croatian poets of 20th Century. An exceptionally reflexive and innovative writer with a pronounced interest in the ontological, Dragojević successfully mixes the mundane with metaphysical. His early influences include Eugenio Montale, Henri Michaux and Gaston Bachelard. The range of his intertextual references expanded subsequently to include subjects as diverse as Presocratic philosophers, medieval Christian mysticism, John Cage and Martin Heidegger. For decades he was the editor of the highly influential feature Poetry Aloud!, broadcasted on Croatian National Radio 3rd Programme. His most famous poetry collections are Turtle and Other Landscapes (1961), In Your Real Body (1964), Storm and Other (1968), The Fourth Beast (1974), Natural History (1974), Figments (1976), The Carbon Age (1981), Observatory (1994), Walking Alongside Railway (1997), Murmur (2005) and Somewhere (2012).

DAMIR ŠODAN is a poet, playwright and translator, born in Split. He has published seven collections of poetry, three books of selected plays as well an anthology of Croatian neorealist poetry and the anthology of contemporary European poetry, Are There Any Poets in Monte Carlo (Croatian PEN, 2022).

René Grgić-Đaković is a contemporary figurative painter born in 1986 in Osijek, Croatia. He earned his MA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 2011 and his MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2023, where he was awarded a full scholarship. René is now based in New York, where he works as a freelance artist. His paintings - often small in scale yet rich in detail - are meditative explorations of pose, light, and atmosphere, inviting viewers into a quiet, introspective space. Through precise brushwork and layered oil techniques, Grgić-Đaković creates works that feel timeless while engaging with contemporary themes. He has exhibited internationally, including shows in New York, Denmark, Greece, the UK, and across Croatia.