The international literary festival "Pro-Za Balkan" will be opened on September 15, at 20:2024 p.m., in the Daut Pasha hammam in Skopje. Top authors from the region, such as Boris Dežulović from Croatia, the winner of the "Prozart" award for 17, Vladimir Pishtalo from Serbia, Rene Karabash from Bulgaria, as well as domestic authors are guests of the festival, which will last until September XNUMX.

On the first festival night, Dežulović will be in the company of Karabash and local author Zvezdan Georgievski. Aleksandar Prokopiev and Ermis Lafazanovski will talk with them.

Boris Dežulović started his journalistic career in 1977, working as an editor for the magazine "Omladinska Iskra". He worked as a journalist in "Nedelna Dalmatia", and then he was a reporter and commentator for "Slobodna Dalmatia". In 1988, together with Viktor Ivancic and Predrag Lucic, they founded the satirical supplement in "Nedelna Dalmatia", "Feral Tribune", which later became an independent satirical-political weekly. He left Feral in 1999 and became a columnist for Globus and other publications published by Holding Europa Press.

Since 2015, he has been writing for "Novosti", the weekly magazine of the Serbian National Council. Dežulović has also been a contributor and regular columnist for many Balkan regional media, from the Ljubljana Slovenian daily "Dnevnik" and the N1 portal, and has written for many other regional media. He was named journalist of the year twice by the Croatian Journalist Association (in 2004 and 2022), and in 2014 he received the European Journalism Award for the best commentator.

He is the author of the novels "Christkind", "Jebo sad 2007 dinars", "Songs from Laura", a book of short stories "Podglavnikova bacterium", as well as the novel for children and young people "The life and dream of the cockroach Jastomir". He is the co-author of several prose collections and monographs, author of the script for the documentary film "Builder's Diary" (1999) by Jasmila Žbanić. Dežulović prepared a selection of his columns in several volumes and edited "The Anthology of Contemporary Croatian Folly" (Feral Tribune Library, XNUMX) with Predrag Lucić, and he also edited "The Libretto of our Little Port Milenko Smoje".

Rene Karabash (Irena Ivanova, 1989) is a writer, screenwriter and poet. For her main role in the film "Godless" she won a number of awards for best actress at European festivals: "Silver Leopard" in Locarno, "Aluminum Horse" in Stockholm, "Heart of Sarajevo", etc. René's debut novel, The One That Remains, won the prestigious Elias Canetti Literary Award and was nominated for the Novel of the Year Award and the Perotto National Literary Award.

In December 2023, the French translation of the novel by Marie-Vrinath Niklov was awarded the French PEN Prize. An English excerpt of the title was awarded the 2023 Gulf Coast Journal Translation Award. "She who remains" has already been published in Arabic, French, Polish, Bosnian and Macedonian, and the rights are sold in Brazil, USA, Italy, Serbia and Greece. A film adaptation of the novel is underway. The film will be shot in 2025 in co-production with Albania, Germany, Italy and Romania.

Rene is the screenwriter of the drama series "We, the Waves", which will be shown on the Bulgarian National Television this year. She is the founder of "The Rabbit Hole", a creative writing academy, which recruits as lecturers some of the most prominent writers in Bulgaria.

Zvezdan Georgievski worked as a journalist in several newsrooms: "Nova Makedonija", "Puls", "Utrinski Vesnik", "Globus"... He is one of the founders of "Kanal 4", the first private radio station in Macedonia. He is the founder of the "Novel of the Year" award, which was once awarded by "Utrinski Vesnik", and is now awarded by the "Slavko Janevski" Foundation for the Advancement and Promotion of Cultural Values.

He published the books "A week of days in the life and death of Grozdan" (novel, "Templum", 2016), "Urban toponyms" (essays, "Templum", 2018), "Da ne bim pokuso" (short stories, "Educational work", 2018), "Cry Like a Whale" (novel, "The Behemoth", 2023) and "Based on Almost True Events" (scripts, "The Behemoth" 2024). He is the author of scripts for short and medium-length documentary films about Skopje. Translates from the languages ​​of the former Yugoslav republics. At the moment, he works as the executive director of the "Slavko Janevski" Foundation.

Guests at the opening will also be members of the "Skopje Fellowship" program - one of the influential names in European publishing, Katarina Lua van Hoff, former head of the foreign literature department at the French giant Gallimard, one of the most prominent publishing directors in the United Arab Emirates. , Tamer Said, the co-founder of the Greek "Vakhikon", Nestoras Poulakos, who published it in Greek, Lidia Dimkovska, a representative from the French agency #BAM, Lalie Bernard, Joanna Jejorna-Kramaj from the publishing house "Poznan" from Poland, Ricardo Lopez from the Spanish publishing house "Armenia", Katja Katz from KUD "Sodobnost International" from Slovenia and literary scout Valeria Paolini from Italy.

On the second day of the festival, on September 16, at 13:30 p.m., the traditional meeting of the members of the "Skopje Fellowship" program with representatives of the Macedonian Association of Publishers will be held in the Bulgarian Cultural and Information Center.

In the evening, at 20:XNUMX, in "Europe House Skopje" a round table will be held on the topic "Literature as a form of resistance", which will be attended by guest writers and will be moderated by Vladimir Jankovski. Earlier, a children's meeting with the Slovenian writer of books for children and adolescents, Majda Koren, will be held in the "Miladinovci Brothers" JU City Library. The writer will also hold a meeting with children at OOU "Vera Ciriviri Trena" in Skopje the next day.

On September 17, the competition of the Ministry of Culture for financing translations of foreign publishers will be presented to the visiting publishers and literary agents. A special literary meeting with Van Hoff and Bernard is scheduled at 17 pm at the French Institute in Skopje.

The "Prozart" award, which the festival awards for the 12th time to an outstanding author for an author's contribution to the development of literature in the Balkans, will be presented to the Serbian writer Vladimir Pishtalo at the closing of the festival on September 17. Aleksandar Prokopiev will talk with Pishtalo, the British writer, film producer and current chairman of the European Film Academy, Mike Downey, the Macedonian poetess, storyteller, essayist, translator, lecturer, Violeta Tancheva-Zlateva and the Serbian poet, essayist and literary critic, Nenad Shaponja and Ermis Lafazanovski.

On September 18, at the Cinematheque, from 20:XNUMX p.m., as part of the off-program, the film "Karaula" directed by Rajko Grlic will be shown, with the presence of the producer, Mike Downey, with whom there will be a conversation before the screening.

The organizer of the festival "Pro-Za Balkan" is the publishing house "Prozart Media" from Skopje. Supporters of the festival are the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, "Traduki", the Embassy of Serbia, the Cultural and Information Center of Bulgaria in Skopje, KUD "Sodobnost", the French Institute in Skopje, the Cinematheque, the Embassy of Greece, the library "Miladinovci Brothers", Stobi Winery, SPONA, Umno.mk and "Metrika Kultura".