Jurors

Libuše Kubová comes from Polná, a charming small town in the Vysočina Region, which, besides its rich history and landmarks, is known as the setting of the so-called Hilsner Affair, in which T. G. Masaryk played a significant role. She still lives in Polná, where she works as a bookseller. For twenty-seven years, she co-owned and ran the family bookshop Kuba a Pařízek on Masaryk Square in Jihlava; today, she and her family run a small bookshop in Polná itself. Her love of books is evident from her profession: she reads across all genres and is always happy to recommend a good book to readers. Apart from literature, she enjoys film and good music, and her favourite way to spend her free time is hiking with her husband and their rather large four-legged companion. She takes great joy in her three sons and their families and is a proud grandmother of two granddaughters and one grandson. She is also active in local politics, having served for sixteen years as a municipal councillor for SNK Polná – Dobrá adresa, with a particular focus on the quality of public spaces, the environment and ecology.

Hana Nováková is a film director, university lecturer, curator and occasional essayist. In addition to studying documentary film at FAMU, she earned degrees in Indology and ethnozoology. She is fascinated by forests-across-the-planet, water beings and bodies of water, magical realism and other extravagant realisms, relationships between humans and other animals, and translation in all its possible forms and languages, including the language of film.

Klára Nováková is a voice actress, presenter, and content creator. She works in dubbing and voice performance and hosts cultural and social events. On social media, under the handle @klariny.knihy, she combines her love of books and film with travel, long-distance hiking, running, and other topics close to her heart. In her work, she strives to talk about culture and pop culture in a way that is personal, accessible, and delivered with a light touch. She enjoys bringing less visible topics into the open and finding sensitive ways to discuss them, an approach she brought to her original miniseries Asexuality for Radio Wave.

Josef Pazderka is a Czech journalist and reporter who has been editor-in-chief of Czech Radio Plus since 2022. He previously worked as a humanitarian aid worker with the organisation People in Need and witnessed the bloody Chechen war at close quarters between 1999 and 2001. He spent many years at Czech Television, including as a foreign correspondent in Russia and Ukraine, where in 2014 he covered the Euromaidan protests and the subsequent Russian occupation. For six years, he was part of the editorial leadership of the online daily Aktuálně.cz. He is the author of the book The 1968 Invasion: The Russian Perspective, which has been translated into several languages. He has received a number of prestigious journalism awards for his work, including the Czech Journalism Award and the Karel Havlíček Borovský Award (2024).

Jakub Rákosník is an associate professor of economic and social history at the Faculty of Arts at the Charles University, where he has also served as vice dean for infrastructure since 2020. His research focuses on the history of welfare states, economic crises, and historical labor theory. He occasionally popularises history in the media (Czech Radio, Deník N, Respekt, Kulturní týdeník A2, Právo, and others) and has been publishing the podcast Minulost není historie (The Past Is Not History) since 2024.