Reading Balkans

In this series of short presentations you will here from: Nora Verde, Nenad Rizvanović, Bojan Krivokapić, Semira Kentrić and Sonja Porle. They speak about their work, their past and future projects and their experiences with residencies. They all agree that residencies are an important resource for authors, giving them the time and the means to write, as well as being an excellent opportunity for networking.

Traduki has published a new call for residencies. Eligible applicants are writers, translators and book professionals from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia. Deadline for submitting applications is April 17, 2022.

For the second half of 2022, residencies are available in 10 cities in Southeast Europe: Belgrade, Bucharest, Cetinje, Novo Mesto, Prishtina, Sarajevo, Skopje, Sofia, Split and Tirana for the duration of 2–6 weeks. Fellowships cover travel costs, accommodation in a fully furnished writers’ apartment as well as subsistence of 250 € per week.

You can apply for translation residencies, writing residencies, interdisciplinary cooperation residencies, practical exchange residencies, research trips and virtual residencies; each with their own specifics.

Selected candidates will be informed no later than May 15th, 2022.

For more information, application guidelines, and application form, visit Traduki’s website.

In 2019, several refugees, living in Ljubljana, Slovenia, have participated in a special part of the Reading Balkans – Borders vs. Frontiers project. The participants wrote short stories during a workshop, led by Andraž Rožman, the author of the narrative nonfiction novel Three Memories, and Asja Hrvatin, and presented them to the public at Vodnikova Domačija in Ljubljana. The participants were: Somaye Asadpour and Karla Kos, Viktoria Pospelova and Mohamed Abdul Al Munem. Somaya and Karla wrote a story about a meeting of two families with different cultural backgrounds. Mohamed Abdul Al Munem wrote about publishing in Aleppo, while Viktoria wrote a touching story about different states of mind.

The activities continued in 2021 with short video stories, in which Viktoria Pospelova, Noorullah Otiyakhel, Mohamad al Burai, and Mohamad Abdul Muneem talk about refugee routes, bureaucratic obstacles, and life in Slovenia.

Viktoria Pospelova

Noorullah Otiyakhel

Mohamad al Burai

Mohamad Abdul Muneem

The Reading Balkans residency selection commitee has carefully reviewed 101 valid applications and selected 19 applicants.

The selected authors will be hosted by Publishing House Goga (Novo mesto, Slovenia), Krokodil (Beograd, Serbia), Goten Publishing (Skopje, North Macedonia), Udruga Kurs (Split, Croatia), Poeteka (Tirana, Albania), Qendra Multimedia  (Prishtina, Kosovo), PEN BIH (Sarajevo, Bosnia and Hercegovina).

The members of the selection committee would like to express their sincere gratitude to all applicants for their interest and show their appreciation of the time and effort the applicants invested in preparing their applications.

The results of the open call are listed in the table below.

The Literary Residence Program is a part of the Reading Balkans project, which  is a cooperation project of the Publishing House Goga (Slo), Goten Publishing (MK), Krokodil (Srb), Udruga Kurs (Cro), Poeteka (Alb), Qendra Multimedia (Kos), PEN Centre (BIH) and partners. 

The Reading Balkans project is supported by the EU Creative Europe program.

The Literary Residence Program within the Reading Balkans project is supported by the TRADUKI network.