Author: Tijana Jovanović-Petrović
Place: Serbia
Date: 6 December 2011

Writers, poets, translators, journalists and other emissaries of culture sailed on the MS Stadt Wien from Belgrade to Vienna in October 2011 and exchanged ideas with their colleagues in the ports where they docked, in this way writing new pages in the books of cooperation with peoples living in these parts.

Author: Rudina Hoxha
Place: Albania
Date: 18 October 2011

When reading the newest issue of Art & Trashëgimi, (Art & Heritage), the 200-page Albanian English-language quarterly, one cannot just flip through it, one really needs to peruse it in order to grasp the full wealth of its content.

Author: Emrah Güler
Place: Turkey
Date: 13 September 2011

"This might be one of the best jobs in Turkey because you always have regular and devoted customers you can depend upon." İlyas Ertuğ's job is not running a bakery or a gas station. Rather, he is, as he told Southeast Europe: People and Culture, the proud manager of a comic book store in Istanbul.

Author: Kerem Saran
Place: Turkey
Date: 7 September 2011

Running a magazine in Turkey is one of the riskiest ventures you can take. Many magazines launch with great expectations, only to fall victim to low circulation figures and eventually shut down. However, there are two types of magazines that are more likely to succeed: humour magazines and women's magazines that appeal to the mainstream.

Author: Tijana Jovanović-Petrović
Place: Serbia
Date: 29 August 2011

Novi Sad’s Komiko publishing house recently issued two comic art classics: the 1938 “Ruslan and Lyudmila” by Vladimir Zderinski and a 1959 anthology of the adventures of Robert Crumb’s Fritz the Cat.

Komiko’s Golden Age Edition includes other works by authors from the so-called ‘Belgrade circle’, a group of Russian immigrants who brought comics to Serbia and are considered pioneers of the ninth art in the country. The circle included artists George Lobachev, Sergei Solovyev, Konstantin Kuznyetsov, Nikola Navoyev, Ivan Shenshin, and Alexei Ranher among many others.

Author: Risto Karajkov
Place: Croatia
Date: 01 May 2011

The 48th edition of Goran’s Spring (Goranovo proljece), one of Croatia’s most  celebrated poetry events, took place on 21-23 March 2011 in several places across the country. The central part of the event, the declaration of this year’s laureates, which carries the name of one of the country’s greatest poets, Ivan Goran Kovačić, was held on 21 March in his birthplace Lukovdol.  

Author: Merima Spahić
Place: Bosnia and Herzegovina
Date: 07 March 2011

In 1961, news shot around the world that a Yugoslav writer from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ivo Andrić, had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for his novel The Bridge over the Drina. Fifty years later, statistics were published which said that 5.4 percent of the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina were illiterate.

Author: Rudina Hoxha
Place: Albania
Date: 19 January 2011
 
Entering its 15th year of existence, the quarterly cultural magazine ‘Mehr Licht’ recently inaugurated its prize for the best cultural essay written in the previous year in Albania.

Author: Dejan Trajkoski
Place: The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia**
Date: 23 December 2010

Goce Smilevski is a writer from Macedonia who has won the European Union Prize for Literature 2010, for his last book ‘Sigmund Freud's Sister’, along with 10 other European authors. The ceremony was held in the Flagey Theatre in Brussels on 18 November 2010, where Smilevski was presented with the award by the Minister of Culture of Belgium, Mrs. Fadila Laanan.

Author: Mirjana Vujović Djurak
Place: Croatia 
Date: 30 November 2010

This was the 33rd anniversary of the Interliber book fair in Croatia. The larger publishers who were present were especially happy with the sales, as some of them even doubled their figures compared to last year.

Author: Merima Spahić
Place: Bosnia and Herzegovina
Date: 28 September 2010 

In the town of Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the birthplace of one of the most important authors of the former Yugoslavia, Meša Selimović, a literary award bearing his name is presented every year during the “Cum grano salis” international literary gathering. The award has been presented since 1998 for the best novel in the language region of Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Place: Turkey
Date: 02 August 2010

Join novelist Ayşe Kulin for a tour of her home town, Istanbul – the largest city of Turkey

Author: Ahmet Emre Çoban
Place: Turkey
Date: 9 June 2010

“We should never forget that we are always left somewhere, that we are pursued by our own ghosts and that we all have to live a continuous banishment and captivity in our personal adventures, in spite of all our efforts. Nothing else matters.”

Serbia will be a special guest country at the Leipzig Book Fair in March 2011. It is expected that Serbian literature will receive considerable attention in this event that usually attracts more than 150,000 people over the course of four days. New literary works from Serbia, and their respective German translations, will be on display and presented to international publishers.

Author: Ahmet Emre Çoban
Place: Turkey
Date: 9 June 2010

Aslı Erdoğan, named as one of the “50 promising writers of the future” by French literary magazine Lire, has established herself as one of the most renowned authors in Turkish literature in a short time, with her novels and stories being published also in a number of countries worldwide.

Author: Nazlan Ertan
Place: Turkey
Date: 04 June 2010

Ayşe Kulin once bitterly complained that the fact that her books made the best-sellers list was a mixed blessing because it prevented the literary critics from taking her seriously.

Author: Emrah Guler
Place: Turkey
Date: 02 June 2010

Perihan Mağden is one of the most inventive and outspoken writers of our time. The way she twists and turns the Turkish language, the delight she takes in the thrust and pull of popular culture, and her brilliant forays into subjects that everyone thinks about and then decides not to put into words, 'just in case' — these have earned her the love of her readers and the respect of her fellow writers.

Author: Risto Karajkov
Place: Croatia
Date: 4 May 2010

Her latest book, “April in Berlin” (Fraktura, Zagreb 2009) is according to the author “neither a diary, nor a novel, nor a travelogue, nor a series of essays, yet it is all of those”. Daša Drndić has been active in many literary genres over the years, she has worked as an editor, wrote literary criticism, radio-plays, essays, short stories, and taught literature, but, in her words, she has dreamt “of writing only”.

Author: Dejan Trajkoski
Place: the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia**
Date: 15 February 2010

His works has been translated into twenty languages: Nikola Madzirov, author from Strumica, a town in the southeast of Macedonia. Madzirov (37), is a poet, author, editor and translator. He has published four poetry books and the most recent one, "Relocated stone" (2007), was awarded with the Hubert Burda Prize for Young East European Lyrics. The chairs of the jury included the Austrian novelist Peter Handke and the German author and publisher Michael Krüger.

Author: Tijana Jovanovic Petrovic
Place: Serbia
Date: 15 March 2010

In 2009, Belgrade based Urban Bug magazine launched its first regional web edition - mag.urbanbug.net. The project, being conducted under the slogan, "Urban Culture Knows No Borders" contains digital content posted by associates based in the republics of the former Yugoslavia.

Author: Danijela Marinković
Place: the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia**
Date: 15 March 2010

Lidija Dimkovska is a Macedonian poet who lives in Slovenia. She holds a degree in Romanian literature. She first took part in a poetry competition when she was 15, and published her first book of poems together with Boris Čavkoski when she was 21. The book won her a poetry debut prize. In an interview with Southeast-Europe: People and Culture, Dimkovska recalls her beginnings as a poet, when her mother brought back from work a written off typewriter. She named this typewriter Ljubica and used it to type out the poems she always writes by hand.

Author: Vuk Perović
Place: Montenegro
Date: 2 March 2010

Andrej Nikolaidis (36) is a member of Montenegro's younger generation of writers unique for his original use of music in literature. In "Mimesis" (2003), he gave the chapters the names of his favourite songs, while his latest achievement - "Dolazak” (The Arrival) (2009) - has its own soundtrack. More precisely, it is a list of songs he recommends readers listen to while reading, which includes among others R.E.M.'s "It's The End of The World," Nick Cave's "Jesus of the Moon," The Smiths' "Meat is Murder," Belle & Sebastian's "O Come, O Come Emmanuelle," and The Stone Roses' "Made of Stone".

Author: Risto Karajkov
Place: Croatia
Date: 1 February 2010

Sanja Lovrenčić (49) is a writer, poet, children’s writer, literary activist, and translator [from German, French, and English]. Moreover, she has produced radio-plays and audio books. Together with other Croatian artists she has founded the Authors’ House, an association aiming to create alternative space for artistic expression.

Author: Risto Karajkov
Place: Croatia
Date: 1 February 2010

His first book of short stories, Midnight Boogie [Ponoćni boogie] was published in 1987 and immediately became a cult classic in Croatia. Its author, Edo Popović (53) then took a long 13-year break from writing. He returned to it around the end of the 1990s and is now, as he says, a full time writer.

Author: Rudina Hoxha
Place: Albania
Date: 3 February 2010

Fatos Kongoli (66), a powerful voice of contemporary Albanian prose, was happy to meet Southeast Europe: People and Culture on a cold winter day in Tirana to share some thoughts about his work. Kongoli has published eleven books up to now.

Author: Valentina Bulatović
Place: Serbia
Date: 5 February 2010

After four years of serving as his country's ambassador to Austria, Dragan Velikić has returned home. The eminent Serbian writer, whose works have won him a following in many European countries, is now again a freelance artist and has begun writing a new novel, which he says might be finished some time in 2011.

Author: Mediha Adrović
Place: Bosnia and Herzegovina
Date: 1 February 2010

In the year of 1968, the novel Ugursuz announced Nedžad Ibrišimović to Bosnia and Herzegovina's literary elite. Not yet 30, Ibrišimović, a veritable literary discovery, became a laureate of the prestigious Sarajevo April 6 city prize.

Author: Mediha Adrović
Place: Bosnia and Herzegovina
Date: 1 February 2010

Abdulah Sidran is a poet, writer, and screenwriter – an artist of exquisite, universal talent with a unique gift for empathy. When asked about his literary role models, those whom he likes to call his “pen brothers,” Sidran says that most do not belong to modern times.

Author: Valentina Bulatović
Place: Serbia
Date: 20 November 2009

Held from 26 October to 1 November 2009, Belgrade's 54th annual International Book Fair attracted over 800 publishers from 24 nations around the world. This year's Nation of Honour was Greece, while writers from Sweden, Japan, Canada, Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, China, Russia, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Israel, Brazil, Iran and the neighbouring countries also attended the event.

Author: Vuk Perović
Place: Montenegro
Date: 14 December 2009

Until the generation of authors that began forming during the 1990s, Montenegro had never had a group of writers of similar age who shared attitudes but also brought something fresh to its literary scene. Yet after years of war and the country’s independence, there came a line of authors whose actions and creations have rightly earned them recognition as a true generation of new voices.

Author: Vuk Perović
Place: Montenegro
Date: 26 October 2009

With his book "The Forgotten Mountain - Montenegro's Mythical Beings" author Milisav Popović has garnered the first prize at the international literary festival "The Lyre of Orpheus" - organised in Sofia and Krumovgrad in November 2008 by the European Academy of Culture.

Author: Rudina Hoxha
Place: Albania
Date: 30 October 2009

“The Wrong Dinner”, the newest book of the world-famous Albanian writer, Ismail Kadare, was written between Durres (Albania), Lugano (Switzerland) and Paris (France) during the summer and the winter of 2007-2008. It has already been translated into French.

Author: Natasa Josifović
Place: Serbia
Date: 22 September 2009

Few publications in Southeast Europe can boast a following of 150.000 readers every month. Balkanwriters.com can: it is an internet magazine that publishes works by Balkan writers, and also the works of foreign authors translated into Balkan languages. When the e-zine was launched in November 2005, it had 3,500 readers; today, the magazine is read by some 150,000 people each month.

Place: Croatia
Author: Risto Karajkov
Date: 16 October 2009

The debut novel “Nowhere, From Nowhere” [Nigdje, niotkuda] by Bekim Sejranović won the Meša Selimović award for best prose in 2008 at the recently held Cum grano salis literary meeting in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Place: the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia**
Author: Aleksandar Sazdovski
Date: 24 August 2009

Ever since its foundations were laid by a series of spontaneous readings in 1962, the Struga Poetry Evenings (SPE) has been a festival celebrating diversity. Not just in language, rhyme, rhythm and form but also in nationality, race and colour. The event, which recently concluded its 48th edition, has in the past 47 years been a meeting point for more than 4.000 poets, translators, essayists and literary critics from 95 countries.

Author: Nazli Demiroz
Place: Turkey
Date: 24 March 2009

Elif Shafak writes both in Turkish and in English. Her works have been translated into more than 20 languages. In an interview with “Southeast Europe: People and Culture,” Shafak (38) speaks about her latest novel A?k, which is the Turkish word for love.

Author:  Dragan Lakic
Place: Serbia
Date: 19 January 2009

With some anticipation, literary critics in Serbia are expecting a new play written by Aleksandar Ðuricic (27), also known as Ash. This new work by one of the country's most distinguished young authors is to  be released in April (2009). His novel ‘Surf on the Red Wave’, published in 2007, was widely praised and brought him centre-stage as one of the leading authors of a new generation in Serbia.