The Biber 03 Collection of Short Stories was promoted on Monday, 27 September at the Theatre in Prijedor. Biber is a contest for engaged short stories in Albanian, Bosnian, Croatian, Macedonian, Montenegrin and Serbian that is organised by the Biber Team of the Centre for Nonviolent Action Sarajevo/Belgrade. The promotion was supported by CZM KVART and the Culture of Memory Foundation from Prijedor.
The panel promoting the Biber 03 Collection included: Monika Herceg, a writer from Zagreba/Petrinja and winner of the first prize in the Biber 03 Contest for her story Head; Ernad Osmić, a writer from Brčko whose story The Devil’s Mother was published in the Biber 03 Collection; Stefan Slavković, a writer from Belgrade whose story Tovarnik is also included in the Collection; and Katarina Milićević from Belgrade/Kragujevac, a member of the Biber Team. Radmila Karlaš, a writer and reporter from Banja Luka, was the moderator of the panel discussion. The first topic concerned the relationship between literature and peace activism and the responsibility of writers and artists in general in peacebuilding and reconciliation processes in the region. How much can art, in this case specifically literature, contribute to change, both on a personal and on a social level, and how can contests such as this one contribute to such efforts?
At the promotion of the Collection, Monika Herceg, a writer from Zagreb/Petrinja who received the first prize in the Biber 03 Contest, said: “This story is from my village, of just a handful of houses, where the crime marked the whole village. Literature can be a powerful tool for dealing with social trauma. This is the precondition for coexistence. As for nationalism, the situation is unfortunately worse than before. It seems there is a generation of us who never experienced the war directly, but have been told about it and indoctrinated.”
One of the main characteristics of Biber is that it is multilingual, it tries to overcome the initial language barrier through translations between the region’s languages to become a place of encounters, understanding, exchange and cooperation. One of the aims of the Biber contest is to motivate artists to tackle the subjects of peacebuilding and reconciliation, to think and write about anti-war topics.
“Today, we are unfortunately seeing reconciliation advocated by people who were directly responsible for preventing reconciliation in the 1990s. In Belgrade, there is increasingly less room to seriously discuss reconciliation. I first saw the collection and realised its power – to open up a much broader window into the past and the present, this region and its people – I felt relieved when I got my story out,” Stefan Slavković said at the promotion of the collection.
“It is not about tolerating each other, if we’re to live together, we must recognise and respect each other. Literature can be a tool of empathy and help us walk in someone else’s shoes. I cannot understand the fate of my own people, let alone others, if I don’t engage with these heartfelt and authentic stories. Recognition, uniting voices, so you feel less alone, so you’re inspired to act,” added Ernad Osmić.
Katarina Milićević, CNA: “I don’t know what it’s like to be a refugee, I haven’t had that experience in my life. But it seems to me that all of us working on this, both those writing stories for the contest and those coming to events such as this one, we are all like refugees, because we are searching for a place of our own where we can feel safe and sound.”
The third Biber Contest was launched in January 2019. We received 464 stories in Albanian, Macedonian, Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian. The jury was made up of Rumena Bužarovska, Lejla Kalamujić and Shkelzen Maliqi.
The first prize went to the story Glava [Head] by Monika Herceg, the second prize to Lito [Summer] by Ante Storić, and the third to Mačetom ćeš me, mačetom ću te [Machete You Me, Machete Me You] by Tamara Kovačević. The collection also includes stories by the following authors: Abid Jarić, Afrim Demiri, Aida Šečić Nezirević, Aneta Petruševska, Besa Kalaja, Bojan Todorović, Bojana Babić Dimitrije Bukvić, Dragana Ranđelović, Ernad Osmić, Gabrijel Delić, Gordana Stojanoska, Imer Topanica, Isidora Petrović, Luiza Bouharaoua, Manja Veličkovska, Mario Merdžan, Milana Gajović, Nikola Petrović, Slađana Nina Perković, Stefan Slavković, and Tihana Gambiraža.
Upcoming promotions of Biber 03 and Biber 04, which is coming out in print at the end of September, have been planned for 1 October 2021 in Podgorica and 21 October 2021 in Novi Sad. The fifth Biber Shorty Story Contest has been announced and will be launched in December 2021.
The Biber 03 collection is available in PDF and Kindle format through our website Biber.
A photo gallery from this event is available here