The Biber multilingual short story contest focusing on reconciliation and the short story collections that came out of it were presented at the Užice Public Library on Thursday, 14 March 2024. The sixth Biber Contest is currently open to all authors writing in Albanian, Macedonian, Serbian, Montenegrin, Croatian or Bosnian.
The sixth Biber Contest will remain open until 26 May 2024 and information about eligibility and how to apply can be found on this link. The jury deciding on the prizes and stories to be published is made up of Tanja Stupar Trifunović, Almin Kaplan and Jasna Dimitrijević.
Helping to promote the Biber Contest in Užice and the past collections, containing stories by over 100 authors that were published in the previous five Biber collections, were:
Tena Lončarević (Županja), Amina Kaja (Pristina), Bojan Krivokapić (Novi Sad), and Ivana Franović (Biber Team, Centre for Nonviolent Action Sarajevo-Belgrade), who talked about the idea behind the first contest in 2016, the five contests completed since then and the sixth one which is currently open.
Ružica Marjanović from the Užice Literary Republic was the moderator and her first question was about what Biber is and how it came about. Ivana Franović explained that the idea behind Biber originated back in 2014 at one of the peace education programmes organised by the Centre for Nonviolent Action and that the desire was to also include authors who write in Albanian and Macedonian because literature from immediate neighbours is rarely translated and the literature scenes in the region know so little about each other.
We didn’t start out with big ambitions, we thought we’d organise one contest, but the response was so great that we are now organising the sixth contest, and we will continue to organise them as long as there is interest, she said.
The organisers of the promotion were the Užice Literary Republic, the Užice Public Library and the Centre for Nonviolent Action Sarajevo/Belgrade, the peace organisation that is also behind the Biber Contest.
Bojan Krivokapić had a dual role in past Biber Contests. He was a jury member for the first Contest and his story “Ptičice” [Little Birds] won first prize at the fourth.
I was invited to be on the jury back in 2014 while on a literary residence in Pristina and I accepted right away. A few years later, it was important for me to tell my story and it’s excellent that the stories are anonymised during the contest until the jury reaches its decision. It was challenging to write about a set topic, but I wanted to see what my story about reconciliation would be. I was interested in memory, the deterioration of the mind and the traces of trauma that remain.
When introducing Amina Kaja, Ružica Marjanović pointed out that her story “Na dnu šoljice” [“The Bottom of the Cup”] from the fifth Biber Collection was translated from Albanian into Serbian by Đorđe Božović, a literary translator who used to attend the Užice Gymnasium and who has taken part in the “Na pola puta” [Half Way] literary festival.
I sent my story to the Biber Contest twice, the first time it didn’t get selected, but I didn’t give up, I got to know about the contest, the overall work of the Centre for Nonviolent Action, and I entered a story in the contest again. It’s important to me that we all give our perspective, and in the story, I wanted to show the private life moments of a family, to help convey to people what war is like and how it doesn’t just happen on a grand scale, but that it also impacts microcosms, families and their daily lives and habits. I don’t know anything about politics, I just write what I know.
Tena Lončarević says of her story “Kava, komšinice” [Coffee, Neighbour] that she wanted to write about how everything that happened didn’t just leave a mark on those who participated in the wars, but also on their wives, children, future generations.
I am a child from Vinkovci, I experienced war and being a refugee when I was 13, but I didn’t write about my own experience, I wrote about people who went through not just war, but a regime change.
The short story collections we presented in Užice resulted from the Biber Contests 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.
The electronic editions of all the Biber collections can be downloaded for free from the this website.
The photo gallery is available HERE