JULIO LUDEMIR is a Brazilian writer and cultural producer, born in Rio de Janeiro and raised in Olinda, Pernambuco. He is one of the founders and organizers of Flup – Festa Literária das Periferias (Literary Festival of the Peripheries), an event established in 2012. He has published nine books, most of which focus on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. “Rim por rim” (Kidney for Kidney), an investigative report on international organ trafficking, was shortlisted for the 2009 Jabuti Journalism Award. He was one of the screenwriters of “400 x 1”, a film directed by Caco de Souza and based on the eponymous biography of William da Silva Lima, one of the founders of the Comando Vermelho criminal organization. He coordinated Jovem Repórter, a communications project run by the Municipal Department of Culture of Nova Iguaçu that engaged up to 400 young people from the Baixada Fluminense region. He is one of the creators of Batalha do Passinho and one of the directors of the musical Na Batalha.

MAME-FATOU NIANG is Trustee Professor of French Studies and the Founder-Director of the Center for Black European Studies and the Atlantic at Carnegie Mellon University. She is the author of Identités Françaises (Brill, 2019) and the co-author of Universalisme (Anamosa, 2022). Her recent research examines Black geographies, Blackness in France and the institutionalization of Black Studies.
Niang is the international curator of the Rio de Janeiro Literary Festival (FLUP), and an artist-in-residence at Ateliers Médicis in Paris, and a fellow at the French Academy in Rome, Villa Medici working on a project entitled “Échoïques” (Sounds of Silence). She is a member of the Black|France|Noire collective and the co-founder of G-SAP, the Global Network for the Studies of Africans and People of African Descent. Mame has held prestigious visiting professorships such as the Melodia Jones Distinguished Chair of French Studies at University at Buffalo, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor in French Studies at Columbia University. She is currently completing a study of Alice Diop and finished the first French translation of Beatriz Nascimento’s work.​