5th KIKINDA SHORT
June 30th – July 3rd 2010
PARTICIPANTS
Austria
Andrea Stift, born 1976 in Southern Styria (Austria), studied Applied Linguistics and German Philology and lives now in Graz. She writes prose and poetry, her stories were published in manuskripte, Kolik and several Austrian newspapers. She won some prizes and awards like the manuskripte-Literaturförderungspreis and the Startstipendium 2009 and was invitated to the Open Mike in Berlin and the Festival Internacional de Poesía Granada in Nicaragua. Her first book, called “Reben” (a story about her great-grandmother), was published in 2007, her second book, a novel called “Klimmen. Erzählung einer WG” (about students living together sharing a flat), was published in 2008. Since 2009 Andrea Stift works for the Austrian literary magazine manuskripte. Blog and further information: www.andreastift.at.
Cornelia Travnicek was born on January 22nd 1987 in St. Pölten, Lower Austria, and lives in Traimauer, Vienna and on the rails inbetween. She attended the HTL St. Pölten (school for higher technical education) in the branch of electronics for five years, after which she studied sinology and informatics at the Alma Mater Rudolphina (University of Vienna).
Cornelia Travnicek is represented by the Literarische Agentur Simon and currently publishes at Skarabaeus Verlag. She has received several prizes and awards, among others the Autorenprämie of the Austrian federal ministry for education, arts and culture in 2008 and the Lise Meitner Literaturpreis in 2009.
www.corneliatravnicek.com
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Muharem Bazdulj (born in Travnik in 1977) is one of the leading writers of the younger generation from ex-Yugoslavia. He has published ten books of fiction, non-fiction and poetry so far. His books are translated in German, Polish and English. Bazdulj's award-winning book of short stories The Second Book was published by Northwestern University Press in their famous Writings from an Unbound Europe series in 2005. His work appeared in World Literature Today, Creative Nonfiction, Habitus and other literary reviews in USA.
Bulgaria
Emanuil A. Vidinski (born June, 1978 in Vidin, Bulgaria) is a Bulgarian writer, poet, journalist and musician. He has published his works in several Bulgarian newspapers (Culture, Literary Newspaper, Capital Light), magazines, and literature web portals (liternet.bg, slovo.bg, grosnipelikani.net). He cofounded the humanistic seminar "Angle" (2003-2004).
Emanuil A. Vidinski has published the collection of short stories Cartographies of Escape (2005) which was among the six shortlisted books for the “Elias Canetti Award” (2005) and the novel Places to Breathe (2008). He won the “Rashko Sugarev Award” in 2004 for his short story “4th of October" and the second prize (first was not given) in the short-story award “Balkani” (Balkans) in 2009 for “Egon and the silence”.
During 2005 – 2006 he wrote a music column entitled "Musaic" for the Literary Newspaper. In 2004 he and poets Petar Tchouchov and Ivan Christoff established the ethno-rock poetry band Gologan. Vidinski was the editor for the “World Novels” series at Altera Publ. (2007-2009) which included novels by Philip Roth, Milorad Pavic, Don DeLillo, John Banville, Olga Tokarczuk and others. He has translated poems from Paul Celan and Gottfired Benn into Bulgarian. Since 2008 he has been working for the Bulgarian desk at Deutsche Welle.
His next book is to be published in 2010.
More info here.
Croatia
Antonija Novaković was born in 1979. in Zagreb. Her first book of poetry, "It's easy to be worse", won the international award "Bridges" at the 47th Struga Poetry Evenings and the poet-debutant award "Goran" at the Goranovo Proljeće festival in Croatia.
The same year, 2008., she recieved the award for short proze writers under 35 years, Prozac.
Alen Kapidžić - during the study on Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Rijeka I was an editor and a writer in a student artzine "Off Skroz", an editor of prose in a student literature magazine "Iže", I was writing for student newspapers "Kacot" and worked at a local radio station "Svid Radio". My short stories were published in several literature magazines in Croatia and Serbia. In cooperation with Enver Krivac, I made a graphic preparation and published our first novel called "Piknik" (Picnic) (1999). With Krivac and Mišo Novković, I wrote second novel called "Smeće" (Junk) (2005) which was noted on two competitions and recommended for publishing but won no prizes. On short story competitions in Karlovac, I won the second prize for year 2002 and first prize in 2006. On the Science fiction & Fantasy short story competitions "Istrakon" (Istrian SF & F convention), my stories were published in collections for years 2003, 2004, 2006 and also in the "SFerakon" (Croatian SF & F convention) collections of short stories for year 2006. In spring 2005, in cooperation with two small publishers from my hometown Rijeka, I founded Edition "Katapult" (Catapult) for young writers. At the beginning of 2006, after we published three books in edition "Katapult", we founded an association named after the edition – "Katapult", aimed at educating young people who want to develop their skills and talents in publishing processes. I was volunteering as the president and the leader of the editorial team for five years and in that period I received annual award from the City of Rijeka for the best volunteer in year 2007. In 2008 I published my third novel, the first one written independently, "Noć uz Rijeku" (A Night with Rijeka) and completed a course in creative writing held by Daša Drndić, one of worldwide known Croatian writers. In autumn 2009, I left the presidential position in "Katapult" and got an employment in Department of Culture in the City of Rijeka.
www.katapult.com.hr/blog/
Danmark
Lars Frost, born 1973, Copenhagen, Denmark.
1994-96 A student at Odense universitet, Center for litteratur og semiotik.
1996-98 A student at Forfatterskolen (National School of Creative Writing, Copenhagen).
Since 2000 his been teaching creative writing in various places and writing for newspapers and magazines.
2000 "Og så af sted til Wien" (And then off to Vienna), short stories, Lindhart & Ringhof
2001 "Allermest undrer det mig at vi kan glemme" (Most of all I Wonder Why Do We Forget) novel, Lindhart & Ringhof
2004 "Smukke biler efter krigen" (Beatyful Cars After the War) novel, Gyldendal
2006 "Et par dage" (A couple of days) poems, Gyldendal
2008 "Ubevidst rødgang" (Uncouncious Jaywalk) novel, Gyldendal
He has been nominated for a number of danish literary awards - Kritikerprisen, Weekendavisens litteraturpris, P2s romanpris, Montanas litteraturpris - but has never won any of them.
Germany
Maike Wetzel, born 1974, attended film school in Munich and in the UK, and currently lives in Berlin. www.maikewetzel.de
She is the author of two award-winning collections of short stories: Lange Tage [Long Days] and Hochzeiten [Weddings], both published by S. Fischer Verlag. The English translation of Long days was published by Comma, UK.
She directed short films and documentaries and also writes screenplays.
Greece
Christos Asteriou was born in Athens in 1971. He studied German and Greek Literature in Athens, Würzburg and Zürich. He was one of the co-founders of the European Centre for Literary Translation in Athens, where he worked for 5 years as Head of the German Department. He translated works of literature from German (Christa Wolf, Hans Georg Gadamer and Hugo von Hofmannstal among others).
His first book Her Naked Body and Other Strange Stories was published in 2003 and was nominated for the Newcomer Prize in Greece. His novel Jason Remvis Journey. A true story came out in 2006. Since then he has published short stories for several anthologies and has collaborated with Greek newspapers while working on a new book.
Holland – special guest country
Sanneke van Hassel, born in 1971 in Rotterdam, studied theatre arts and cultural history. Her debut collection of short stories IJsregen (Ice Rain), published in 2005, was nominated for several literary awards. Her stories, regularly published in literary magazines Tirade, Passionate and Bunker Hill, were included in anthologies of contemporary Dutch fiction. In 2006 she wrote about every day life in Sarajevo after a three week stay: Pieces of Sarajevo. In 2007 she published her second collection of short stories titled Witte veder (White Feater). For this book she won the BNG Literary Award. In February 2010 her first novel is expected: Nest. At the moment she is also programming a short story festival in Amsterdam, Hotel Van Hassel, that will take place from 16-18th of April 2010.
Sanneke van Hassel lives and works in Rotterdam.
www.sannekevanhassel.nl
Ton Rozeman was born in 1968 in The Hague, Netherlands. He studied Dutch and received a degree from the writers’ college ’t Colofon where he now teaches writing short fiction (though he thinks that writing can not be taught in a schoolish way, but one can coach writers and give them feedback). His literary debut was the 2001 short story collection ‚Intiemer dan seks’, which in 2004 was followed by the collection ‚Misschien maar beter ook’. Both collections were short- and long-listed for several awards, and even won one. He is an avid supporter of the short story genre, and founder and chief editor of the website ShortStory.nu. His stories are ‚slices of life’ and are mostly about human relationships. His novella ‚Nu gaat het gebeuren’ has been published in 2007. In his leisure he practices yoga and helps his daughter with her homework.
www.shortstory.nu
Maartje Wortel (27 years old) lives and write in Amsterdam. She is gratuated at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, were she studied image and language. In 2007 she won a price for best young writer in the Netherlands. Her short stories were published in several magazines. In september 2009 she got hor first published short story book called: this is your home! At this moment she is working to get a new novel finished.
Hungary
Orsolya Bencsik was born in 1985, Bácska Topolya. Currently lives in Szeged. Formerly she had studied Philosophy and Hungarian Studies at the Faculty of Arts, University of Szeged. She writes poetry, prosaic verses, and lately short stories. She was one of the authors in the anthologies titled Best Short Stories of the Year 2008 (Az Év legjobb novellái 2008, published by Magyar Napló) and Prosaic Time (Prózaidő, published by Parnasszus, 2009). In 2009 her first volume was published under the title Dissolving Blue in the Water of I (Kékítőt old az én vizében), for which she received the Sinkó-Prize.
Lazslo Kis. I was born in 1976. I live in Gyula – it’s a little town in the south-east countryside of Hungary. I work at the Erkel Ferenc secondary grammar school, I teach history, literature and Hungarian grammatics. I also make editorship at the periodical named Bárka. I’ve published two books of short stories at the publisher Tiszatáj: Szindbád nem haza megy (2003) and Árnyas utcai szép napok (2008).
More info here.
Macedonia
Vladimir Martinovski (1974) is a literary critic, essayist, poet and storyteller. He is an assistant professor of Comparative Poetics at the General and Comparative Literature Department of the Blaže Koneski Faculty of Philology, Ss Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje. He received his bachelor and masters degrees at the Faculty of Philology, and his PhD at the University of the New Sorbonne – Paris III.
He is President of the Comparative Literature Society of Macedonia and an executive board member of the International Association for Semiotic Studies. He is also a member of the International Comparative Literature Association and of the European Network for Comparative Literary Studies. He is a co-editor of the Macedonian haiku magazine Мравка (Ant).
He has authored the following books: From Image to Poem – Interference between Contemporary Macedonian Poetry and Fine Arts (a study, 2003), Maritime Moon (haiku and tanka, 2003), Hidden Poems (haiku, 2005), And Water and Earth and Fire and Air (haiku, 2006), Comparative Triptychs (studies and essays, 2007), Les Musées imaginaires, or Imaginary Museums (a study, 2009), A Wave Echo (haibuns, 2009), Reading Images – Aspects of Ekphrastic Poetry (a study, 2009) and Quartets (poetry, 2009).
He co-edited the books: Ut Pictura Poesis – Poetry in Dialogue with Other Arts, a Thematic Selection of Macedonian Poetry (with Nuhi Vinca, 2006) and Metamorphoses and Metatexts (with Vesna Tomovska, 2008).
His poetry – mainly haiku – has been translated into Albanian, English, Greek, Japanese, Polish, Slovene and Serbian.
He was awarded first prize at the Nova Makedonija Short Story Competition in 2009.
Vladimir Martinovski is an active musician as well. He has performed on the albums OPA (2002) of the Pece Atanasovski Folk Instrument Orchestra, Калдрма, or Cobble (2004) of the band Kaldrma and and Kalemar (2008) of the Baklava band.
Romania
Radu Pavel Gheo (Pavel Gheorghiţă RADU, b. 1969, Oraviţa), Romanian writer and essayist, is working as an editor and translator for the Polirom Publishing House. He is a member of PEN Club Romania (since 2005) and of the Romanian Writers’ Association (since 2003). He currently lives in Timisoara, Romania, and he is editor and regular contributor for the cultural magazine Orizont (Timisoara).
He has published the following volumes:
- Valea Cerului Senin (The Valley of the Clear Blue Sky), Athena, 1997 – short stories;
- Despre science fiction (On Science Fiction) – Omnibooks Satu-Mare, 2001, first edition; Tritonic, Bucharest, 2007, second edition – literary studies;
- Adio, adio, patria mea, cu i din i, cu a din a (approx. Farewell, My Homeland, Farewell....), Polirom, 1st edition – 2003, 2nd edition – 2004, essays;
- Romanii e destepti (Romanians IS Smart), Polirom 1st edition – 2004, 2nd edition – 2006, essays;
- Fairia – o lume indepartata (Fairia – A Land Faraway), Polirom, 2004 – novel;
- DEX-ul si sexul (DEX and sex), Polirom, 2005 – essays;
- Radu Pavel Gheo, Dan Lungu (coord.) – Tovarase de drum. Experienta feminina in comunism (Fellow Travellers. The Feminine Experience in Communism), Polirom, 2008 (collection of essays);
- Numele mierlei (The Name of the Blackbird), Polirom, 2008 (short stories).
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Radu P. Gheo wrote a play entitled Hold-УП Akbar sau Toti în America (Hold-УП Akbar or Everybody in America). The play has been put on stage by the National Theatre „Mihai Eminescu” from Timisoara, starting July 2007.
Radu Pavel Gheo has published several hundred essays and studies in some of the major cultural magazines from his country and in some foreign magazines: Timpul, Dilema (veche), 22, Orizont, ArtPanorama, România literară, Observator cultural, Lettre Internationale, Amphion, Korunk, Wienzeile (Viena, Austria), Dialogi (Maribor, Slovenia), Sarajevo Notebooks (Sarajevo, Bosnia), Libertatea (Vojvodina, Serbia) Au Sud de l’Est (Paris, France), Lampa (Warsaw, Poland), Cultures d’Europe Centrale (Paris, France) etc.
He has also been included in several literary anthologies from Romania, with short stories or essays. As a translator from English, he has translated around twenty volumes, mostly fiction.
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Prizes and awards (selected): Timisoara Writers’ Association Award for Adio, adio, patria mea cu î din i, cu â din a (approx. Farewell, My Homeland, Farewell...) – 2003; “Pro-Cultura Timisiensis” Award for Cultural Merits, granted by the Timiş County Council – 2005; Timisoara Writers’ Association Award for DEX-ul si sexul (DEX and sex) – 2006; Excellence in Arts Award, granted by Timisoara City Council – August 2007; “Andrei Bantas” Award for English translations (Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea) – May 2008.
www.gheoland.ro
Slovakia
Gustáv Murín (born April, 9th 1959 in Bratislava, Slovakia) published 20 books (incl. 5 in Czech + 1 in French translation + 1 in Hindi): Novel, novella, 2xcollections of stories, collection of sci-fi stories, 7xcollect. of essays, extensive essay-study about biology, 2x popular studies (about marriage, about longevity), retrospective studies about organized crime in capitol city and Slovakia, 2xpopular encyclopaedia, 2xcollections of travel stories. His latest book about mafia in Slovakia (Mafia na Slovensku, 2009) become bestseller with first print of 20 000 copies.
Author of more than 1200 articles in 50 major Slovak, Czech and international newspapers and magazines.
Almost 200 texts of Gustáv Murín were translated into 36 other languages (i.e. Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Cyprus, France, Great Britain, Greenland/Inuit, India/Hindi, Italy, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Ukraine, USA etc.).
He had readings and literary presentations in countries like Armenia, Austria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, France, Georgia, Greece, India, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland, USA…
Obtained international writer´s fellowships: USA (1995, 1998, 2001, 2002), Poland (1998), Switzerland (2002), Serbia (2007) and Greece (2009).
Further details in: http://gustavmurin.webgarden.cz/biography
Text samples at: http://muringustav.blogspot.com
Slovenia
Matjaž Brulc (1976) was born in Novo mesto, Slovenia. In 2002 he graduated in art history at University of Ljubljana. Ever since the late nineties he workes as a free lance journalist and art critic for various media, writing mostly about contemporary visual arts and culture. Between 2003 and 2009 worked in one of the clubs in Ljubljana's Metelkova city. Currently he works as a curator in a nonprofit art gallery Simulaker in Novo mesto.
He published two book of short prose: Diznilend (2005) and Kakor da se ne bi zgodilo nič (2009) as well as a book of poems entitled Balade za psa in prhljaj (2006). His prose was published in various slovenian (literature) magazines. Some of his stories were translated in german, english and croat language. In 2009 he won first prize for the short story at the literature contest of the magazine Rast.
Matjaž Brulc is a member of Slovene Writers Association as well as of Slovene Art Critics Association. Lives and works between Novo mesto and Ljubljana.
Spain
Santiago Pajares was born in Madrid, Spain, in 1979. He started to write and shoot short films with his friends at the same time he studied, obteining some awards along and across Spain. At the age of 20, he wrote and sold his first film script. At the age of 23, he wrote his first novel, called “El paso de la hélice”, which was published by Tabla Rasa, the first publisher who read it. The novel was well recibed by the readers, and had good figures in terms of sales. Due to it, a Japanese publisher showed interest for the novel, published in Japan finally by Village Books. His second novel, “la mitad de uno”, published by Tabla Rasa too, had the same success than the first one. Before to reach the 30 years old, the third novel appears, named “el lienzo” and published by Umbriel.
Currently Santiago is writing his fourth novel, at the same time he writes short histories and films scripts.
www.elpasodelahelice.com (firsth book), www.lamitaddeuno.com (second book), www.el-lienzo.com (third book)
Serbia
Aleksandar Gatalica (1964) Graduated in Literature from the University of Belgrade in 1989. Published novels: Reversed faces, The end, Eudipides death, Inivisble, and collections of short stories: Mimicries, Century, Diary of conquered Architects. He received literary awards "Miloš Crnjanski", "Ivo Andrić", "Stevan Sremac". Works of Aleksandar Gatalica are translated to ten European languages. More then 15 years he has been contributing music critics and transltor from ancient Greek language. Presently he hold the position of Editor of Literature supplement in daily newspaper BLIC.
www.gatalica.com
Milosh K. Ilic was born in 1987 in Pancevo, where he still lives. He completed primary and secondary education in his hometown. He has written short stories since he was 15. Four of his stories were published in the compilation Rukopisi (Manuscripts), two stories in Alma short story collections, and a number of stories in smaller local magazines and on the Internet. A book of his stories, Priče o pivu (Beer Stories), was published by the Laguna publishing house. He is a student of Faculty of Dramatic Arts, University of Belgrade.
About Milos’s book more info here.
UK
Lewis Crofts, born in 1977, grew up in southern England near Bristol, where he cut his head open a prodigious seven times before the age of 12. At 18 he went to Oxford University, where he studied French and German literature, specialising in the medieval stuff about dragons, princesses and dwarves. A couple of years in Germany were followed by a couple of years in the Czech Republic, where he finally got round to writing his first novel The Pornographer of Vienna, based on the life of the Austrian artist Egon Schiele. In 2003, he moved to Brussels where he still works as a journalist and writer.
Craig Taylor’s non-fiction has appeared in the most prominent newspapers in three countries – the Guardian (UK), the New York Times (USA), and the Globe And Mail (Canada) – while his fiction has appeared in the Mississippi Review. For the past few years he has been writing One Million Tiny Plays About Britain for the Guardian’s Weekend magazine, and three of these plays were printed on handbags and given to the winners at the Cannes Film Festival. He also publishes his own photocopied magazines, including The Review of Everything I’ve Ever Encountered and Dark Tales of Clapham. His first book, Return To Akenfield, was published by Granta in 2006.
http://fivedials.com/fivedials
Zimbabwe
Petina Gappah is a lawyer and a writer. She has law degrees from the Universities of Zimbabwe, Cambridge and Graz in Austria. She lives in Geneva where she works for the Advisory Centre on WTO Law. Her first book, An Elegy for Easterly, a collection of short stories, was awarded the Guardian First Book Prize. Her second book, The Book of Memory, a novel, is forthcoming from Faber and will be published in more than ten languages.
www.petinagappah.com
Special guests
Jim Hinks is an editor at Comma Press, the Manchester-based independent publisher specialising in short fiction. In 2005 Comma established a translation imprint, with the remit of bringing the best foreign short fiction to an English-reading audience. Since then Comma has published 3 anthologies of European short stories, an anthology of short stories form the Middle East, and single author collections by Empar Moliner (Catalan), Maike Wetzel (German), Arnon Grunberg (Dutch), Gyrðir Elíasson (Icelandic) and Hassan Blasim (Arabic), with forthcoming collections from Mirja Unge (Swedish), Nedim Gursel (Turkish), Ágúst Borgþór Sverrisson (Icelandic), Emil Hakl (Czech), Pawel Huelle (Polish) and Ala Hlehel (Arabic). More info at www.commapress.co.uk.
Lee Brackstone is Publishing Director for Fiction and Popular Culture titles at Faber and Faber, where he has worked since 1996. His authors include Petina Gappah, Sarah Hall, Rohinton Mistry, Andrew O’Hagan, David Peace, DBC Pierre, and Simon Reynolds.
