20 Feb SPACES OF FREEDOM@LESEN.HÖREN – Showcasing contemporary literary creativity from South-Eastern Europe
Saturday 8 March 2025, 8PM
Alte Feuerwache – Halle, Brückenstr. 2, Mannheim
Tickets: https://altefeuerwache.reservix.de/p/reservix/event/2343640
With: Damir Karakaš, Goran Vojnović, Rumena Bužarovska, Adelina Tershani, and Ana Ćurčin
Moderated by Mima Simić
During the dynamic evening program, four authors: Adelina Tërshani from Kosovo, Rumena Bužarovska from North Macedonia, Goran Vojnović from Slovenia, and Damir Karakaš from Croatia will be presented through the combination of live readings in original languages supported by subtitles with translations in English and short onstage interviews. The break in the middle of the program is reserved for a mini concert by the Serbian singer-songwriter Ana Ćurčin. The program is presented by Mima Simić, herself an accomplished author and translator as well as dedicated LGBTQI activist who also happens to be a regular, idiosyncratic and well-loved presenter of KROKODIL Festival in Belgrade, Serbia.
The programme is realized in cooperation with The Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb) in Berlin.
Participants biographies:
Adelina Tërshani (1997, Prishtina), a feminist activist, journalist, author and a pioneer of slam poetry in Kosovo, who challenges societal norms and advocates for gender equality. Pursuing a Master’s Degree in Conflict Management and Humanitarian Action in Italy, she combines academic knowledge with hands-on experience gained from working with rural women in Kosovo and the Western Balkans. Through her poetry, notably “Patriarchal Logic,” “House Pillar,” and “Patriarchal Trauma,” she criticizes patriarchal structures and amplifies marginalized voices. Her impact extends globally, with translations of her works fostering dialogue on social justice in multiple languages, including English, Greek, German, Spanish, Arabic, Serbian, and Turkish.
Damir Karakaš (1967, Plašćica near Brinje, Lika) as a teenager published cartoons and drawings in Yugoslav newspapers and received several awards for his caricatures. Later he worked as a journalist in Zagreb and Split before moving to Bordeaux, France, in 2001. From 2002 to 2007, he lived in Paris, supporting himself by playing the accordion, studied French at the New Sorbonne, performed, and exhibited conceptual works.
Karakaš’s published works include “Bosanci su dobri ljudi” (1999), “Kombetari” (2000), “Kino Lika” (2001), “Kako sam ušao u Europu” (2004), “Eskimi” (2007), “Sjajno mjesto za nesreću” (2009), “Pukovnik Beethoven” (2012), “Blue Moon” (2014), “Sjećanje šume” (2016), “Proslava” (2019), and “Okretište” (2021).
“Kino Lika” was adapted into a film by Dalibor Matanić and “Proslava” by Bruno Anković, winning the Grand Golden Arena in Pula. His plays were performed both in Croatia and abroad. Damir Karakaš received several major literary awards and his works were translated into ten languages. “Eskimi” was the first Croatian work translated into Arabic. “Proslava” was recently published in San Francisco and London. His titles are featured in Croatian school textbooks and studied at the Drama Academy in Zagreb.
Goran Vojnović (1980, Ljubljana) studied film directing and has been directing films and writing screenplays for more than twenty years now. But despite his successful film career he is mostly recognized for his writing, especially after his first novel Čefurji raus! (Southern scum go home!) became a regional bestseller and won him many awards. Vojnović has so far written four novels which are translated into more than twenty languages, while some of them have also been successfully adopted for theatre and film. His internationally most renowned novel is his second, Jugoslavija, moja dežela (Yugoslavia, my fatherland), which, among many other acknowledgments, received prestigious Angelus prize for the best Central European novel. He lives and works in Ljubljana.
Rumena Bužarovska (1981, Skopje) is a writer, literary translator and social commentator. So far she published four volumes of short stories translated into fifteen languages. Her book My Husband has received critical acclaim in Europe and has been adapted into six stage productions (Skopje, Ljubljana, Athens, Belgrade, Zagreb and Budapest). She is the author of two non-fiction books: the essays Next to God, America (2024) and a study on humor in contemporary American and Macedonian short fiction (2012). She is a literary translator from English into Macedonian, having translated authors such as J.M Coetzee, Lewis Carroll, Truman Capote, Flannery O’Connor and Iain Reid. In 2016 she was selected as one of the Ten New Voices of Europe by Literary Europe Live platform within Literature Across Frontiers, she is the 2017 winner of the regional Edo Budiša prize awarded by the Istria County in Croatia, and is the recipient of the 2018 Fall Residency at the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. She is co-initiator and co-organizer of the PeachPreach women’s storytelling event in North Macedonia and co-host of the Radio Mileva podcast. Bužarovska is a professor of American literature and translation at the State University in Skopje.