“SKOPJE FELLOWSHIP" PROGRAM
Prashant Pathak, Giunti Editore
Prashant Pathak, Giunti Editoreis the Head of English Publishing Development at Giunti Editore. He leads strategic publishing initiatives that bridge Italian publishing with global English-language markets, with a focus on co-editions, rights development, and international partnerships. With a cross-continental footprint spanning Italy, the U.S., and India, Prashant plays a key role in expanding Giunti’s global visibility and fostering new collaborations in the English-language publishing ecosystem.
Giunti Editore is one of Italy’s oldest and most prominent publishing houses, with a heritage dating back to the 19th century. Headquartered in Florence, it operates across a wide range of editorial segments — from children’s books and school publishing to illustrated nonfiction, fiction, and lifestyle. With a legacy of innovation and cultural impact, Giunti remains a leading name in Italian and international publishing.
Tasja Dorkofikis
Tasja Dorkofikis has worked at several publishing houses, from Random House, where she was the Divisional Publicity Director for Cape, Chatto, and Vintage, to Portobello Books, where she worked as Associate Publisher. She currently programmes an international book festival, Bibliotopia, at the Jan Michalski Foundation in Switzerland, and works for the Arts Council. Of Polish and Greek extraction, she has always been interested in literature in translation.
Ivan Fedechko
Ivan Fedechko is the rights sales manager at Old Lion Publishing House. He has been with the press since 2012, during which time it has grown from a small children's publisher into one of Ukraine's largest publishing houses and the leading exporter of Ukrainian literature abroad. He has represented Old Lion at international book fairs and participated in industry programs in Bologna, Frankfurt, Guadalajara, Seoul, Taipei, and Tokyo. The books he has sold rights to have been translated into over 50 languages. In 2023, Old Lion received the Bologna Prize for the Best Children's Publishers of the Year. Ivan studied Czech language and literature in Lviv and Slavonic literatures in Brno. He lives in Lviv with his wife, their two young children, and a cat.
Marco Vidal González
Marco Vidal González (Spain, 1995) graduated in Slavic Philology at the University of Granada. He specialised in Bulgarian at the University of Veliko Tarnovo and Sofia University. In 2023 he was awared the Bulgarian literary award 'Peroto' in the category 'Translation from Bulgarian into a foreign language'. He has translated Bulgarian contemporary authors like Rene Karabash, Nataliya Deleva, Georgi Raychev and Alexander Vutimski and Macedonian poets like Josip Kocev, Magdalena Caparovska, Stefan Markovski and Mitko Gogov. He is the director of the publishing house La Tortuga Búlgara with special focus on underrepresented languages from Eastern Europe in Spain.
František Malík
He studied cultural studies at Comenius University in Bratislava. In 2014, he founded the international book festival BRaK, and the following year the eponymous publishing house began its activities, focusing on many genres such as comics, picture books, prose, and poetry. Throughout the year, he organizes cultural events – for example, the Slovak and Czech poetry competition BÁSNE SK/CZ, the apartment festival Cez prah na bytoch, and the literary program at the Pohoda festival. In 2017, he co-founded the cultural magazine Kapitál. He lives in Bratislava with his wife and children.
Szilvia Kuczogi
She has been working in publishing for eight years as the Publishing Director of Europa Könyvkiadó, a 70-year-old literary publisher with a strong tradition. Before that, she spent over 20 years in journalism—as Vice Editor-in-Chief of Hungary’s leading serious daily, and earlier as Editor-in-Chief of a major women’s magazine. Throughout her career, she had focused on selecting meaningful, high-quality content for readers. She believes that information, knowledge, and emotions—shared through the written word—help build empathy. That’s what drives her work.
Ida Antonella (Della) Passarelli
Ida Antonella (Della) Passarelli Passarelli was born and lives in Rome. Graduated in modern letters in 1986, she founded the Sinnos Social Cooperative - Sinnos Publishing - in 1990. She is the Editorial director of Sinnos Publishing house, since 1992. She is a member of the Italian section of IBBY, since its foundation. Since May 2025 she has been president of ADEI, the Independent Italian Publishers' Association. She has carried out and continues to carry out numerous training courses for adults on books and reading, both for Sinnos and the associations of which she is a member.
She has always worked to educate reading and promote "good books". From 1992 to 2024 she taught Italian language and literature, as Adjunt Faculty at the American University of Rome.
Marta Górska
Marta Górska has been working at the Foksal Publishing Group as Rights Manager since 2022. She represents over 120 authors across all the group's imprints (W.A.B, Buchman, Wilga, Uroboros), selling foreign and movie rights. She graduated Classical Philology and Polish Studies from the University of Warsaw and a Business Analysis and Project Management from Kozminski Academy in Warsaw. She spent the first years of her professional career working as a radio producer and then as a concert booking manager. She has extensive experience collaborating with artists from various fields and developing interdisciplinary projects. She also reviews non-fiction books for the publishing house and prepares analyses of foreign markets.
Katrin Reinmaa
Katrin Reinmaa Katrin Reinmaa (born 30.07.1968), a philologist by training with a lifelong love for literature. Her academic path led her to explore Goethe’s reception in Estonia. Still, her professional journey first unfolded in journalism, where she worked as a language and culture editor, managing editor, and editor-in-chief for newspapers and lifestyle magazines.
In 2011, she fully transitioned into publishing and became the majority owner, CEO, and editor-in-chief of Päike ja Pilv, a publishing house dedicated to children’s and young adult literature. This work allows her to combine her editorial experience with my belief in the power of books
to inspire and shape young minds.
Outside of her professional life, she enjoys reading, classical music, walks in nature, and the refreshing challenge of swimming in cold water. She lives in Estonia with her husband, daughter, a cat, and a dog, and she looks forward to the meaningful exchanges within the Skopje fellowship.
Katarzyna Domańska
Katarzyna Domańska – a passionate reader, translator, and promoter of children’s books. She lectures on children’s literature, reading promotion, and creative writing at the University of Warsaw and Collegium Civitas. A member of the Polish Section
of IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People), she has been active in the field of children’s culture for many years.
From 2010 to 2023 she headed the promotion department at Dwie Siostry Publishing, one of Poland’s leading children’s publishers. She has translated several picture books into Polish, including
Jon Klassen’s I Want My Hat Back, Miroslav Šašek’s This is London and This is Rome, and Ruth Krauss & Maurice Sendak’s classic A Hole Is to Dig.
In 2024 she founded Kaczki Katastrofy – Creative Promotion Agency, dedicated to ambitious children’s literature. Her
academic background includes an MA in Early Childhood Education and English Language Teaching from the University
of Warsaw, where she also began a PhD course in education.
Alenka Urh
Alenka Urh (1983) graduated in philosophy and comparative literature at Faculty of arts in Ljubljana. She is self-employed
and works as literary critic (focusing on children´s literature), translator and editor. In 2020 she became the president of
Slovene Literary Critics Association and recently began her third term. She is a member of executive board of IBBY Slovenia and
a Slovenian representative for an international children´s literature journal Bookbird. She is also one of five members of an expert jury of one of the most important literary prizes for children´s
and youth literature entitled “večernica”. She is a member of the expert committee at the Public Agency for Books of the Republic of Slovenia. She currently works at Sodobnost as a project manager for projects OLL LE and OLL LB and is coordinating
the reading promotion project in Slovenian schools.
Alexandra (Alexa) C. Apostolaki
Publisher, Kaleidoscope Publications (www.kaleidoscope.gr)
Alexandra (Alexa) C. Apostolaki , publisher of Kaleidoscope Publications, studied Pharmacy at the National Capodistrian University of Athens, Greece and has a M.Sc. degree in Print Journalism from Boston University, USA. Apart from her extensive experience in publishing (co-founder of Ammos editions/1981 and Kaleidoscope Publications/1995) her professional experience also spans from print and broadcast journalism (1976 -1982) to the development and production of educational videos in the field of Ancient Greek & Byzantine History, Chemistry, Biology and Astronomy for Secondary Education, in collaboration with Open University and the Lambrakis Research Foundation (as Educational Programs Director/1994 - 2000). She is a member of the Board of MEDASSET an international NGO, for conservation and protection of sea turtles.
Anna Schlossbauer
Anna Schlossbauer has worked across the literary field—as a literature specialist at the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, co-director of the Bolo Klub collective for emerging picture book artists, and coordinator of bilingual translation workshops for the TOLEDO program. She founded Sharing Pool, a platform for exchange among festival organizers, and has been involved with the Babel Festival in Bellinzona since its inception in 2006. In 2026, she will take over its co-direction.
In 2024, she joined TRADUKI, the international literature and translation network for South-Eastern Europe, where she is responsible for book fair appearances and communication.
Saša Krnic
She graduated in Indology and History from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb, where she later defended her master's thesis in the field of children's literature. Together with her husband, she founded Ibis Grafika 30 years ago. Before becoming the director of Ibis Grafika, she worked as a junior researcher at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. Over the past ten years, she has participated in several European projects through Ibis Grafika, one of which is Our Little Library. In 2022, she initiated several nationally significant projects, including a children's literature festival in Zagreb called Books in the Treetops, a festival in Jelsa on the island of Hvar called Dječji festiVal, and Zagreb’s first children's bookstore – Pričozemska
Tamer Said
One of UAE's foremost publishing executives. He was appointed in July 2023 as the Director of Sharjah International Literary Agency (SILA), which was launched in 2020 by the Sharjah
Book Authority (SBA) to boost the communication between publishers, authors, translators, illustrators, and other
stakeholders, and help transform numerous works for global consumption.
Previously, Tamer spent over 12 years as the Managing Director
of Kalimat Group, a leading Arabic publisher in Sharjah, UAE. During his tenure, he expanded the company's publications into new markets worldwide and fostered strong partnerships with international publishing houses.
During his career, Tamer joined esteemed organizations in the publishing and book industry, such as the Emirates Publishers Association, the UAE Board on Books for Young People (UAEBBY), and the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair. He also participated as a jury member in various book awards in the UAE.