Douglas Mark Ponton is Associate Professor of English Language and Translation at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Catania. His research interests include political discourse analysis, ecolinguistics, interactive sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, pragmatics, corpus linguistics, and critical discourse studies; he is also a keen amateur musician. Ponton's main publications are For Arguments' Sake: Speaker Evaluation in Modern Political Discourse, and Meaning Politics: A Manual of Political Discourse Analysis. As well as politics, his research deals with a variety of social topics, including tourism, the discourse of mediation, ecology, local dialect and folk traditions, including proverbs and Blues music. He has also published a paper on the figure of the bandit in popular song, exploring the lyrics of Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie. Uwe Zagratzki is Professor of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures and the Chair of Literature at the Institute of English, University of Szczecin, Poland. He has widely published on the topics of Scottish and Canadian Literature and Culture, Cultural Studies and War and Literature. His recent publications include co-editorships of and contributions to Ideological Battlegrounds - Constructions of Us and Them Before and After 9/11, Exile and Migration, Disrespected Neighbo(u)rs - Cultural Stereotypes in Literature and Film, Perspectives on Canada - International Canadian Studies despite Harper and Trudeau. His interest in the culture of the Blues, evolving from an early passion for rhythmical music, manifests itself in a study of the Blues in Germany (with Winfried Siebers, Das Blaue Wunder - Blues aus deutschen Landen) and contributions to specific collections (e.g. "From Early Country Blues to Rap" in Chaos in the Contact Zone, 2017). He is also a founding member of a local group of Blues enthusiasts in Northwest Germany. After having organised annual international Blues concerts for 25 years, their 'Blueslawine' ('Blues Avalanche') was awarded the best national Blues event in 2017.