Lauren Mendinueta was born in Barranquilla, Colombia in 1977. She began writing in 1997 while working as a librarian in Fundación, a small village in Colombia. She has published six books of poetry and one biography of Marie Curie. A collection of her poems, entitled Poesía en sí Misma (2007), was published by the Universidad Externado de Colombia as part of its Un libro por centavos collection. La vocación suspendida (2008) received the sixth Martín García Ramos International Award for Poetry.

In 2005 Lauren Mendinueta lived in Mexico under a Resident Artist scholarship, granted by the Colombian Ministry of Culture and the Fund for the Culture and Arts in Mexico (FONCA). She is frequently invited to festivals and literary gatherings in Europe and the Americas. Her poetry has been translated into Italian, Russian, German, Portuguese and French. Her work has been included in poetry anthologies in Europe as well as America. Between 2006 and 2007, she lived in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. She is currently writing a novel and is based in Lisbon, Portugal.

Born in Medellín, Colombia, in 1960, Liana Mejía won the University of Antioquia’s IV National Poetry Award in 1982, followed by the University of Nariño’s Awaska National Poetry award in 1984. In its early years, she was a member of the Prometeo magazine editorial commitee. Liana writes, she says, because she has to, and notes that a poem “shares your essence in a way, it seems, that enables others to see the passing of your life through it, and that is always dangerous; baring your soul makes you more vulnerable with each poem.”