The multilingual collection Biber 06 from the regional Biber Short Story Contest was presented at the 54th edition of the Slovo Gorčina Culture Festival in Stolac, on Sunday 27 July 2025.
The presentation was organised by the Slovo Gorčina Culture Festival and the Centre for Nonviolent Action Sarajevo/Belgrade, a peace organisation that runs the Biber Contest.
The Slovo Gorčina Culture Festival is one of the most important cultural events in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with its first edition dating back to 1971. Conceived by Mehmedalija Mak Dizdar, the Festival has been held in Stolac from the very beginning, at the Radimlja stećak necropolis and other significant locations. Its mission is to bring the best of contemporary art and culture to the poet’s hometown. The participants of this year’s Festival included, among others: Adania Shibli, Šemsa Gavrankapetanović, Amila Smajović, Adisa Bašić, Ermina Ribić, Damir Uzunović, Nenad Rizvanović, Almin Kaplan, Monika Herceg, Igor Borozan, Jasmila Žbanić.
The following people spoke at the presentation of the Biber 06 Short Story Collection: Almin Kaplan from Stolac, member of the Biber 06 Contest jury, Monika Herceg, a writer from Zagreb, Bojana Savić, a writer from Belgrade, and Emina Đelilović Kevrić, a writer from Vitez. Ivana Franović from the Biber Team spoke about the original idea of the Biber Contest, the six collections published so far, and future plans. The discussion was moderated by Zejneba Hajdarević from the Slovo Gorčina Culture Festival.
Speaking as a member of the Biber 06 Contest jury, Almin Kaplan said that it was very difficult to choose 20 stories from around 100 that the jury received to read, and that every selection is necessarily subjective. He noted that “literature, including Biber, can help us understand each other better, even those we think we understand well. In BiH, xenophobia is institutionally encouraged, and Biber is helping us resist this.”
Monika Herceg, a writer from Zagreb and winner of the second prize in the Biber 06 Contest, commented on a remark that hardly anyone reads these days, saying that she disagreed and that the paradigm that nobody reads should be replaced with the paradigm that everybody reads. “Those who ask why we’re still writing about war, or women, or poverty, are in fact privileged. You write about what must be written about. In my neck of the woods, the war is still topical, and will continue to be topical, because it needs to be written about and should be written about for as long as this can help to change things for the better.”
Emina Đelilović Kevrić, a writer from Vitez, emphasised that she came from a divided town where spiritual and all other kinds of borders persist, as well as the phenomenon of two schools under one roof. “It’s an abyss of absurdity in which we live. Biber is here, among other things, to help us reconcile with ourselves and also with others.”
Ivana Franović underlined that there’s fatigue with how we talk about the war, but that if the war is discussed in a constructive way, that fatigue doesn’t come on, because people are hungry for a constructive approach. “In Serbia, the topic of war isn’t widely represented in literature, so I’m always happy to see writers choose to take that step, because it needs to be addressed.”
Bojana Savić, a writer from Belgrade whose story was published in the Biber 06 Collection, added: “In Serbia, there was no direct experience of war. I was seven years old when the war started and so I can speak from the perspective of children who were taught that there were some enemies out there. Alongside that, there was also the imposition of guilt. However, there’s also a huge amount of denial in Serbia and an attitude that we have nothing to do with it. It’s important to me that Biber includes the perspectives of everyone, even those who weren’t directly involved in the war.”
The 6th Biber Contest was open from 8 December 2023 to 26 May 2024. A total of 490 stories were submitted. The jury, comprising Almin Kaplan, Jasna Dimitrijević and Tanja Stupar Trifunović, selected 24 stories to be included in the multilingual collection and decided on the prizes. One story was selected for the collection by the Biber Organising Team.
The prize-winning stories are: “Dječak koji je volio zvona” (The Boy Who Loved Bells) by Vladimira Becić from Dugo Selo – first prize; “Tijela od vode” (Bodies of Water) by Monika Herceg from Zagreb – second prize; and “Erzähle mir etwas über dich” (Tell Me Something About Yourself) by Danijela Repman from Sombor – third prize.
Translations into Albanian were done by Qerim Ondozi and Ilir Ajdini, translations into Macedonian by Đoko Zdraveski, Ivan Šopov and Ilir Ajdini, and translations into BCSM by Đorđe Božović, Lidija Barić and Irena Šentevska. Jana Danilović designed the cover illustration.
The short story collection we presented in Stolac resulted from the Biber Contest for short stories about reconciliation in the context of the legacy of the wars and violence in the countries of former Yugoslavia, as well as stories contributing to better understanding among people, reducing hatred and dismantling prejudice, anti-war stories, stories about dealing with the past, deconstructing images of the enemy, empathy, brave stories that dare walk in the “enemy’s” shoes, stories that push boundaries and open up the way to build a more stable, safer and freer future for all.
Electronic editions of all Biber Collections can be downloaded for free from the Biber website. The new Biber 07 Contest will be announced in December 2025.