ATTILA BALÁZS (1955, Novi Sad/Újvidék), writer, translator, journalist. Author of twelve books of prose. Founder of the cultural magazine Ex Symposion. He worked as editor for the YU Radio- Television, moved to Budapest in late 1991. For a time he worked as war correspondent, then as political correspondent for the newspaper Pesti Hírlap. His works have been published at home and abroad. 1994–2012 he was editor of the cultural programmes of the Hungarian Radio. Among many distinctions, he has received the Attila József Prize for Literature and the Book of the Year Prize 1999.
JAMES C. BENNETT is a writer and entrepreneur. He was cofounder of two private space transportation companies and other technology ventures. He has written extensively on technology, culture, and society. He is the author of The Anglosphere Challenge (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), The Third Anglosphere Century (Heritage Foundation, 2007), a former columnist for United Press International, and has contributed to The New Criterion, National Review, The National Interest, The New Atlantis, National Post (Canada) and The Daily Telegraph (London). His most recent book is America 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity in the 21st Century – Why America’s Best Days Are Yet to Come (Encounter Books, 2013).
MELINDA BERLÁSZ Music historian, retired senior research fellow at the Institute of Musicology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, laureate of the Sándor Veress Prize, the László Lajtha Prize and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences’ Award. She is a member of the Musicology Committee of the Academy of Sciences, of the Academy’s General Assembly, and of the OTKA Social Sciences Board. Her main research interest includes the history of Hungarian music in the 20th century. She is a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts.
ROD DREHER is a writer of non-fiction books and senior editor at The American Conservative magazine. His writing focuses on the intersections among religion, culture, and politics. Dreher has been a columnist for the New York Post, The Dallas Morning News, and National Review, among other publications. His books include two New York Times bestsellers — The Benedict Option (2017) and The Little Way of Ruthie Leming (2013), as well as volumes on topics as diverse as Dante Alighieri and traditional conservatism in the modern world.
CHARLES FENYVESI (Debrecen, 1937) took part in the 1956 Revolution, then left Hungary and settled in the United States. Won a scholarship to Harvard and graduated in 1960. Has been a journalist since 1962, winding up with The Washington Post and later with US News & World Report. Has written six nonfiction books and is now trying his luck as a playwright. His works include When the World Was Whole, When Angels Fooled the World: Rescuers of Jews in Wartime Hungary and Splendor in Exile: the Ex-Majesties of Europe.
GÉZA JESZENSZKY (Budapest, 1941), D. Phil., historian, graduated from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. From 1976 to 2011, he taught at what is today Corvinus University of Budapest. Was a Fulbright Visiting Professor at U.C. Santa Barbara in 1984-86. Taught the history of international relations and of Central Europe at numerous other universities in the US and Europe. He was Foreign Minister of Hungary in the first non-Communist government (1990–94), Ambassador to the United States of America in 1998–2002, and in 2011-2014 to Norway and Iceland. He is the author of numerous publications on history and foreign policy, his latest book in English is Post-Communist Europe and Its National/ Ethnic Problems (Budapest, 2009). His account of Hungary’s relations to her neighbours (in Hungarian) came out this April. He is an editorial adviser for Hungarian Review.
GYULA KODOLÁNYI (Budapest, 1942), Editor-in-Chief of Hungarian Review is the author of eleven collections of poetry, scholarly and literary essays and poetry translations. He taught English and American Literature at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest in 1970–1989. He received research and teaching fellowships from the British Council, the American Council of Learned Societies, CIES and The German Marshall Fund of the US. He taught at the University of California in Santa Barbara (1984–85) and at Emory University in Atlanta (2004–2009), and read his poetry in English widely in the US. In 1987, he was a founding member of the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF). In 1990–94, he served as Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister. In 2000–2005 he was an Advisor to President Ferenc Mádl. In 2012, he received Hungary’s Middle Cross with the Star and in 2005 the President’s Medal of Honour for his public and literary achievements. With Magyar Szemle, he received a Prima Prize in 2003. In 2015, he was Prima Primissima Prize winner in literature. In 2016, he received the Hungarian PEN Club’s Janus Pannonius Prize for Poetry Translation.
ALBERTO MINGARDI is an Assistant Professor in History of Political Thought at IULM University of Milan. He is also the Director General of the Istituto Bruno Leoni, Milan and Turin, Italy, a free market think tank. He holds a PhD in Political Science from University of Pavia. He is an author and journalist and focuses on classic liberalism in economic thought. He is also an adjunct scholar with Cato Institute, Washington, D.C.
JOHN O’SULLIVAN (Liverpool, 1942) is editor-at-large of National Review in New York where he served as Editor-in-Chief for ten years. He was a Special Adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street and later assisted her in the writing of her two volumes of memoirs. He has held a wide variety of senior editorial positions in the media on both sides of the Atlantic. He is the founder and co-chairman of the Atlantic Initiative, an international bipartisan organisation dedicated to reinvigorating and expanding the Atlantic community of democracies, launched at the Congress of Prague in May 1996 by President Václav Havel and Lady Thatcher. His book, The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister (on Pope John Paul II, President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher), was published in Hungarian, too, in 2010. Until 2011, he was the Executive Editor of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty in Prague. Currently he is the President of the Danube Institute, Budapest.
NICHOLAS T. PARSONS is a freelance author, translator and editor based in Vienna. A graduate of New College, Oxford he spent two years in Italy teaching at the British Institute of Florence and as Reader in English at the University of Pisa before returning to UK to work in publishing for ten years in the 1970s and early 1980s. In 1984 he settled in Central Europe with his Hungarian wife, the art historian Ilona Sármány, and has since published some 17 books on cultural topics, writing also as Louis James. These include the Blue Guide Austria and the Blue Guide Vienna as well as the first English guide to Hungary to be published following the “system change” of 1989. His essay-length Xenophobe’s Guide to the Austrians (Louis James) has been in print for 20 years. His recent books are Worth the Detour: A Cultural History of the Guidebook from Pausanias to the Rough Guide, and Vienna: A Cultural and Literary History (Signal Books / Oxford University Press). His latest work is A New Devil’s Dictionary: Lexicon for Contrarians, a reformulation for our times of Ambrose Bierce’s satirical take on disingenuous language.
DAVID A. J. REYNOLDS is a freelance writer and editor from England, specializing in history and current affairs. He has lived and taught in Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Philadelphia, and presently resides in Illinois.
TIBOR VÁRADY (Zrenjanin/Nagybecskerek, 1939) is a professor of law. He received his law degrees in Belgrade (JD) and at Harvard (LLM and SJD). He taught for almost three decades at the Novi Sad University School of Law, and for a number of years he was editor and editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Új Symposion. He is member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Since 1993, he has been teaching at the Central European University in Budapest. He is also a tenured Professor at Emory University, Atlanta. In legal practice, he acted as international arbitrator in about 200 cases, and also acted as counsel and advocate before the International Court of Justice. He has about 300 scholarly publications in five languages. Most of his publications are devoted to various fields of international law, but they also include collections of essays and a novel.