During May, we organised promotions of the short story collection on reconciliation in Sarajevo (12 May), Belgrade (24 May) and Skopje (31 May).
The Sarajevo promotion was attended by Nadia Geras, Slađana Ljubičić and Mehmed Đedović, whose stories were published in the collection, and Katarina Milićević on behalf of the Biber team. Ahmed Burić was the moderator. The panel discussion in Belgrade hosted Vladimir Tabašević and Nadia Geras, awarded the first and second prize in the contest, as well as Faruk Šehić who was a jury member and Qerim Ondozi who translated the stories into Albanian, and Ivana Franović on behalf of the Biber team. Jovana Gligorijević was the moderator. The Skopje promotion was attended by Arsim Jonuzi, an author published in the collection, translator Qerim Ondozi, peace activist Boro Kitanoski and Aleksandra Bogdanovska on behalf of the Biber team. Xhabir Deralla was the moderator. The Skopje promotion was bilingual, in Macedonian and Albanian, with simultaneous interpretation.
Given that book promotions and literary readings are not very popular events, we did not expect many visitors and were satisfied with the number of people that showed up (about 30 for each of the promotions). In Skopje and Belgrade, the audience was mostly made up of peace and human rights activists. Only the promotion in Sarajevo received media coverage. In Belgrade and Skopje, we were particularly glad to receive dear friends who had come from other cities or countries to attend the event.
The visitors could get a copy of the collection, and its electronic edition is available online at: http://biber.nenasilje.org/biber-01-2016/
The next promotion will be in Novi Sad on 9 June at 7 pm at the BulevarBooks bookshop. It is organised by Slađana Ljubičić who received the third prize in the Biber contest.
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Biber is a short story contest on the topic of reconciliation, which was open from March to September 2015. Stories written in one of the following languages were eligible: Albanian, Bosnian, Montenegrin, Croatian, Serbian or Macedonian. The Jury comprised Doruntina Basha, Faruk Šehić and Bojan Krivokapić. The contest was organised by the Biber team in cooperation with the Centre for Nonviolent Action Sarajevo|Belgrade.
The contest received 316 stories from different parts of the former Yugoslavia and the diaspora. The collection includes a selection of 25 stories.