10 Mar Congratulations to the selected authors!
We are pleased to announce the four selected authors who will take part in the residency program within the Literature Actually project supported by the British Council!
Ennis Ćehić from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dhurata Hoti from Kosovo*, and Hana Korneti from North Macedonia will spend 1 month in Belgrade, and Maša Seničić from Serbia will spend 1 month in Tirana in order to reflect upon reconciliation and cultural diversity. The resident authors will be hosted by the KROKODIL Association in Belgrade, Serbia, and Instituti i Librit dhe i Promocionit in Tirana, Albania.
Congratulations to the selected authors!
Ennis Ćehić’s writing explores themes of displacement, creativity, and capitalism. His debut collection of stories, Sadvertising, was published in March 2022 by Penguin Random House [Aus/NZ] to critical acclaim and has been described as an ‘electrifying and genre-defying new voice in Australian fiction.’ Sadvertising was translated into Bosnian by Bosnia’s leading publishing house, Buybook, and released in August 2023, with several other territories and translations currently in discussion. Sadvertising is also optioned for a screen adaptation by See-Saw Films. He is the author of New Metonyms, a literary photography book about his homeland, released with photographer, Shantanu Starick in 2020. Ennis is a recipient of a Wheeler Centre Next Chapter Fellowship in Australia, a UNESCO City of Literature residency in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and was a 2024 writer-in-residence at the Jan Michalski Foundation in Montricher, Switzerland. He lives and works in Sarajevo.
Dhurata Hoti is a writer and artist specializing in dramaturgy. She obtained her degree in dramaturgy from the Faculty of Arts in Prishtina, where she experimented in a diverse range of creative disciplines, including theatre plays, film scripts, short stories, performances, poetry, painting, and culture journalism. Her work tends to delve into the intricacies of personal and social issues, the collective unconscious, universal myths, sexuality, the search for identity, spirituality, and contemporary relationships.
Influenced by psychoanalysis, her writings are a way exploration of the human psyche and its underlying patterns. She focuses on unraveling the complexities of the human condition and shedding light on the dynamics of society.
Her artistic practice includes styles such as magical realism and surrealism, intertwined with elements of horror and mystery. These stylistic choices are a way to include symbolic representations of society’s metonymy, offering glimpses into the intricate, often hidden facets of human nature and what is left unsaid. Her characters act as poignant testaments to a post-war, internet-era generation grappling with the big changes that are affecting the whole world, while being stuck in a isolated country. She explores themes like the eternal quest for identity, fluidity of emotions and sexuality, desire, addiction, mental health, navigating a world of boundless possibilities, toxic relationships, and the lingering effects of unhealed personal and social traumas.
Maša Seničić (Belgrade, 1990) graduated in Dramaturgy at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts (FDA) in Belgrade, where she then completed her MA in Theory of Dramatic Arts and Media. She is now a PhD candidate at the FDA, both working as a Research Associate and pursuing her thesis in the field of new media narratives and memory studies. Seničić is one of the founders, a program coordinator and a mentor in Filmkultura, association for education in audiovisual culture (alive since 2013). She has taken part in various local and international film, theatre, visual arts and poetry projects, workshops, exhibitions – as a participant, a lecturer and an editor – while also contributing to film festivals as a writer, a moderator and a programmer (her film-home being the Auteur Film Festival, Belgrade). In 2020 she exhibited her first solo project, the interdisciplinary research Zlatna obala in GMK gallery (Zagreb). Her prose, poetry and essays can be found in anthologies, collections and print/web magazines in the ex-Yugoslav region and across Europe (translated to about 8 languages). In 2015 she won the prestigious Mladi Dis prize for the unpublished manuscript, which led to her first poetry book “The Ocean” (Okean). Her second book, “As Occasional as a Vacation Home” (Povremena poput vikend-naselja) was published in 2019 (by Treći Trg) and has been awarded the Dušan Vasiljev prize for best regional book. As a freelance author and editor Seničić contributes to diverse publications, spaces and events. At this moment she is devoted to a few independent books and projects, which explore the spatial and material boundaries of text.
Association KROKODIL and Instituti i Librit dhe i Promocionit (ILP) designed the project LITERATURE ACTUALLY: Elevating Festivals through Professional Exchange to foster collaboration, networking, and knowledge exchange among cultural professionals and organizations in the region. Over the period of 12 months, the project will feature a range of activities, including emerging literary creators from the Western Balkans region in residency programs in Belgrade and Tirana, networking events, knowledge exchange, and mutual festival programs. These activities will support civil society organizations and CCI entities engaged in contemporary literature festivals, emphasizing the importance of connecting, entrepreneurship, skills development, and creative cooperation.
The project LITERATURE ACTUALLY: Elevating Festivals through Professional Exchange is supported by the British Council.
The “Culture and Creativity for the Western Balkans” (CC4WBs) project, funded by the European Union, is focused on fostering dialogue in the Western Balkans by enhancing the cultural and creative sectors for increased socio-economic impact. Over this 48-month period, the CC4WBs project aims to improve the performance of the cultural and creative sectors to enhance skills, knowledge, and access to financial aid, ultimately increasing competitiveness and sustaining the co-production and circulation of goods and services in the Western Balkans.