Alki Zei was born in Athens and passed her early childhood in Samos, where her mother was from. When she went to school her family first moved at Maroussi and later in Athens. She studied philosophy at the University of Athens, drama at the Athens Conservatory and scenario writing at Moscow Cinema Institute.
She started writing very young. At high school she wrote some pieces for the puppet theatre. One of the characters she created became later one of the main heroes of the Athens Puppet Theatre "Barba Mytoussis". She continued writing by publishing a series of short stories in Neaniki Foni (Young Voice), a magazine for young people directed by a team of intellectuals of that time. She kept writing short stories and novelettes during the years of her stay in the Soviet Union that were occasionally published in literary magazines in Greece.
She married to the theatre play writer Giorgos Sevastikoglou (died in 1991) and had two children. Since the years of the German occupation in Greece during Second World War, she has fought actively for freedom, social justice and democracy, being part of the left wing movement. She has suffered a lot for her involvement to that cause. From 1954 to 1964 she lived as a political refugee in the Soviet Union. In 1964 she returned with her family in Greece, but in 1967 they had to leave again, this time to Paris, chased by the dictatorship. She returned after the reconstitution of the parliamentary republic in 1974 and lives ever since in Athens.
The clear cut way of her writing, the linguistic integrity, the critical attitude towards persons and situations, her humour and the penetrating view to facts, are the dominant characteristics of Alki Zei's works. Achille's fiancee, Wildcat under glass and Petros' war, are included in the classic best sellers of contemporary Greek literature.
Except Achille's fiancee, all her books address mainly to children and teenagers, but are always read with great pleasure by adults as well. They are inspired by her personal experiences, weaving along the recent history of Greece, treating meanwhile universal subjects. Wildcat under glass, her first novel, has been a milestone for Greek children's literature. Almost fifty years after its first publication, it is now considered a classic book of the international literature for children.
Alki Zei's entire work is translated in various languages around the world. She has also translated books for children from French, Italian and Russian, among which Gianni Rodari's and Vera Panova's works.
Music Box is a Popping Unity that first appeared at Who’s Got The Groove 2014 and they gave an amazing performance. It is a crew formed by a unity of ten of the best greek poppers that each individual has a lot of trophies to show. In competition level they won 2nd place at ALL STYLES category of Breakin’ Bad 2015.
They have showcased as guests at Battle Of The Best Athens 2014, at On Beat Dance Festival 2015 and at Red Bull BC One Greek Cypher 2015. They also were the guest showcase for Heineken’s promotional event #AthensMosaic that took place at the Gazi area.
Since the beginning of 2015, Music Box are part of Hood Groove Management who promotes them to the rest of the world.
Faramerz Dabhoiwala is a writer, historian, and professor at Oxford University. His acclaimed book, The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution (Penguin) tells the extraordinary story of the birth of modern western attitudes to sex. His work has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Swedish, German, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Chinese.
He was born in Bristol in 1969, and brought up in many places. He grew up mainly in Amsterdam and then moved back to England to be educated, at York and Oxford. His historical interests were likewise never fixed - at first he was fascinated by the political history of the early twentieth century, then by the religious and social history of medieval peasants. His current work is the outcome of a series of happy accidents.
Faramerz initially embarked on the research that led to The Origins of Sex out of sheer curiosity about the sexual mores of men and women in the past, and why they had changed so much and so suddenly in the eighteenth century. At first he thought it would be a brief project, but uncovering amazing material in archives, libraries, and art galleries around the world, he became determined to do justice to what turned out to be one of the great untold stories about the origins of our modern condition.
Ian Kershaw, the brilliant biographer of Hitler, gave him his first job, at the University of Sheffield, and since 1996 Faramerz has taught at Oxford, first at All Souls College and latterly at Exeter College. His next book will be a global history of English and its uses since the middle ages.
After interning at Hanna-Barbera and Spumco while at USC, Aliki Theofilopoulos began her career as an animation trainee at Walt Disney Feature Animation. She then went on to animate on such films as "Hercules", "Tarzan" and "Treasure Planet" before moving into the world of television as a Story Artist, Writer, and Director. At Nickelodeon, she created and co-executive produced two shorts for Nickelodeon/Frederator's "Random Cartoons" show, "Yaki and Yumi" and "Girls on the GO!". She spent several years working at Disney TV as a Writer, Story Artist, and Emmy-nominated Songwriter on the highly-acclaimed show, “Phineas and Ferb.” She has also written and storyboarded on the award-winning “Disney Mickey Mouse” shorts, and directed the Annecy nominated short "Doctor Lollipop" from Cartoon Hangover. Currently, Aliki is executive producing and directing on a new shorts series for Disney called "Descendants: Wicked World" as well developing an original pilot for the studio.
She lives in Los Angeles with her two beautiful children and crazy dog.
Vaggelis Avgoulas was born in 1988 and is from Crete (Chania). He began his education at the Center for Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind (KEAT) in Kallithea, and he graduated from the 35th Primary School of Piraeus, participating in the Model Education Program “Helios” (integration of blind students into regular public school classrooms). He was one of the top students to enter the University of Athens Law School in 2006, where he excelled receiving a performance award from the State Scholarships Foundation (2007), and graduated with a diploma grade of 8.4/10.
He now works as a Lawyer and a scientific associate of the Minister of Interior, he is a Regular Representative in Greece of the International Organization VIEWS for young visually impaired, Deputy General Secretary of the Panhellenic Association of the Blind, and Secretary of the Youth Committee of the above Association.
Furthermore, he is now completing his Master’s degree in Civil Law at the University of Athens Law School, while at the same time having the role of a Deputy Member of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Accessibility Unit for Students with Disabilities, Vice President of the Athletic County Association of Disabled "Tyrtaeus”, and since January a Member of the Committee on Health and Social Policy of the Central Union of Municipalities of Greece.
He speaks English and French, he writes articles in printed and web media in Greece and abroad on education and social issues, and he is one of the authors of the first Group Web-based Novel in Greece entitled "Dodeka” (Twelve).
Since 2012 to date, he has been an elected Member of the General Board of the National Federation of the Blind in Greece, and since 2010 he has been an elected Municipal Councilor of Ilion while in 2011-2014 he was appointed Deputy Mayor for Social Policy, Transparency, Lifelong Learning and eGovernment.
He was the youngest Deputy Mayor in Greece and the only person with a disability placed in this position throughout the country.
Alexandra Antonopoulou is a design assistant professor at the University of Greenwich, a lecturer at the Goldsmiths’ College of London University and director of the pre-postgraduate program at the University of The Arts in London. Her interdisciplinary research studies the relationship between the fiction of game and design as a learning and social development resource. Her body of work has been exhibited in museums and galleries such as the London Victoria & Albers Museum, the London Design Museum, the Whitechapel Gallery, the E4 Channel and the Honf Fab Lab Indonesia. She has collaborated with museums, schools, research centres and universities in Europe, Asia and Australia (Goldsmiths, Newcastle University, Arshake-Reinventing technology, etc.). In the past she has worked as a designer and has been active in graphic, fashion and interactive design as well as in illustration and children book writing.
Guy-Philippe Goldstein is a senior advisor with FABERNOVEL, a digital strategy agency, and is a senior analyst with the Cyber-desk of Wikistrat, a global collaborative platform of analyst & strategic experts. His acclaimed novel, Babel Minute Zero, is a forward-thinking look at the role of cyberwar in global geopolitics. He spent ten years researching and writing the work, which examines the potential for cyber-warfare to affect global calculations and the multiplicative effect of digital technology in diplomatic, military, commercial, and media crises.
He has given talks at TEDx Paris and was a keynote speaker for Tel Aviv University’s cyber-warfare conference. His writings have appeared in Haaretz and Le Monde newspaper. He is also a contributor to the academic journal of the INSS, the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel-Aviv and has participated to research seminars on society’s digital transformation with the Data & Society (think tank in NYC) and other security-related academic research centers in the US.