Poetics of Nonbelonging

Marie Alpermann, born in Leipzig in 1988, studied Slavic studies and literature in Halle (Saale). She spent semesters abroad in Sarajevo and Novi Sad and lived for a year each in Kyiv and Ljubljana. Since 2019, she has worked full-time as a literary translator from Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian. She has translated works by Lejla Kalamujić, Dragoslava Barzut, Senka Marić, Jelena Lengold, Jasminka Petrović and Biljana Jovanović into German, among others. For her work, she received grants from the German Translator’s Fund, the Saxony-Anhalt Art Foundation and a Perewest scholarship from the Freundeskreis Literaturübersetzer. Alpermann participated in several thematic and international workshops. In 2023, she spent six weeks in Belgrade with the support of TRADUKI. She is a member of the Association of German-Speaking Translators and lives in Halle (Saale).

Barbara Anderlič, born in Ljubljana in 1984, has a degree in translation studies. In 2014, she received the exil-DramatikerInnenpreis of the Wiener Wortstaetten for her play Von Schablonen und Romanfiguren. In 2015, she won the ITI Global Playwriting Contest with A Continental Divide. Her translation of Samira Kentrić’s Balkanalien: Erwachsenwerden in Zeiten des Umbruchs was published by Jacoby & Stuart in 2021, followed by Jurij Devetak’s graphic novel Nekropolis (Schaltzeit Verlag), based on Boris Pahor’s novel of the same name, in 2023. As an interpreter, Anderlič has had the privilege of lending her voice to Graciela Iturbide and Mojca Kumerdej, among others. In 2012, she was a member of the Standard audience jury at the Viennale film festival in Austria.

Yordanka Beleva was born in Tervel (Bulgaria) in 1977. She studied Bulgarian philology and librarianship and holds a doctorate in comparative librarianship. Her work includes poetry and short stories as well as a children’s book. Yordanka Beleva’s texts have been translated into English, German, Croatian and Arabic. She has received several awards for her prose and poetry.

Alexandru Bulucz, was born in 1987 in Alba Iulia, Romania, where he spent the first 13 years of his life. He studied German and comparative literature in Frankfurt am Main. He is a poet, editor, translator and critic. His poetry debut Aus sein auf uns was published in 2016 and he was awarded the Wolfgang Weyrauch Prize in 2019 for poems from was Petersilie über die Seele weiß. In 2022, he was awarded the Deutschlandfunk Prize at the Days of German-Language Literature in Klagenfurt. He lives in Berlin.

Born in 1965 in Shkodra, northern Albania. He lives as a professor of aesthetics in Tirana and works as a theatre and film director. His internationally acclaimed work includes poems, essays, monographs, prose and plays. Translations in German: his novels Tirana. Ein kurzer Traum and Jeder wird verrückt auf seine Art (tr: Zuzana Finger).

Antje Contius, born in 1966 in North Hesse, is Director of the S. Fischer Foundation since 2008. She studied Slavic studies in Münster, Freiburg, Frankfurt/Main, Moscow, Warsaw and Sofia. As a freelance editor, she worked for publishing houses in Austria, Germany and Switzerland and was particularly committed to Eastern European literature. She also pursued this focus as a consultant for Eastern Europe and the Middle East in the foreign department of the Leipzig Trade Fair and as head of this department from 1995-1998. She joined the S. Fischer Foundation in 2002.

Irena Cvetkovic (1982) holds a PhD in Gender Studies.  She is a researcher and activist in the field of social justice and gender equality. Her public engagements started with her blog- Femgerila and she is a  regular columnist at Prizma and author and host of the podcast Radio Mileva. At the moment she is executive director of the Coalition Margins and visiting professor (docent) at the Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities in Skopje.

Zoltán Danyi, born in 1972 in Senta, Yugoslavia, studied philosophy and literature in Novi Sad and Szeged. He made his debut as a poet in 2003 and has published poems and short stories. He completed his doctorate on Béla Hamvas in 2008 and was an editor and university lecturer. He was awarded the Miklós Mészöly Prize for his first novel, translated into German under the title Der Kadaverräumer. Danyi, a member of the Hungarian minority in Serbia, lives as a rose grower in Senta.

Brigitte Döbert, born in Offenbach am Main in 1959, has been living and working in Berlin since 2010, having worked in Mainz, Zagreb, Belgrade, Wuppertal and Cologne. Her livelihood and one of her passions is translating literature, including works by Bora Ćosić and Miljenko Jergović. She has received several awards for her work, including the Leipzig Book Fair Prize and the Straelen Translation Prize from the Kunststiftung NRW.

Vedran Džihić is Senior Researcher at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs (oiip) and teaches at Vienna University and the University of Applied Arts Vienna. He is the director of the Center of Advanced Studies Southeastern Europe at the University of Rijeka and is a member of the “Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group”. Džihić is the author of numerous books and publications and is active in the realms of policy advisory and public debates. His research focuses on democracy development, nationalism, authoritarianism, EU enlargement and foreign policy, developments in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, protest movements, migration and democracy.

Maja Gebhardt was born in Sarajevo in 1981 and came to Germany as a refugee in 1992 because of the war in her home country. In 2005, she completed her German and English studies at the LMU Munich with a Magister Artium. Afterwards, she taught German as a foreign language in integration courses and worked as an examiner in the language centre of the association “Hilfe von Mensch zu Mensch”, but also in the Balkan Days team, which she still supports today by moderating the culture programme and organising its literature day. Since 2018, she has been living in Berlin, where she now organises book presentations for the eta Verlag and author talks for the BKS book club, where she also enjoys interpreting and translating from the BKMS languages into German.

Alem Grabovac was born in Würzburg in 1974 to a Croatian mother and a Bosnian father. He studied sociology, political science and psychology in Munich, London and Berlin and lives with his family in Berlin. He writes as a freelance author for Die Zeit, Welt, taz and other publications. His highly acclaimed debut novel Das achte Kind was published by hanserblau in 2021.

Andrea Grill was born in Bad Ischl and studied in Salzburg, among other places. She did her PhD at the University of Amsterdam on the evolution of endemic butterflies in Sardinia. Grill writes poetry, stories and novels and translates from Albanian and Dutch. Her translations include the novel Milchkuss by Mimoza Ahmeti, the poetry collection Kinder der Natur by Luljeta Lleshanaku and Der Schlaf des Oktopus by Ervina Halili. As an author, her work include Das Paradies des Doktor Caspari (2015), Cherubino (2019) and most recently Bio-Diversi-Was? Reise in die fantastische Welt der Artenvielfalt and Seepferdchen, both published in 2023.

Sebastian Guggolz, born in 1982 on Lake Constance, studied art history, German studies and folklore in Hamburg. After several years as an editor at Matthes & Seitz Berlin, he founded Guggolz Verlag in 2014, where he publishes new and rediscovered translations of forgotten classics from Northern and Eastern Europe. In 2016 he was honoured with the Übersetzerbarke, in 2017 he received the Kurt Wolff Förderpreis and in 2019 and 2020 Guggolz Verlag was awarded the Deutscher Verlagspreis. In 2022, he received the top prize of the German Publishing Award and the Hotlist Prize. Since 2022, he has also been team leader for classics in the editorial department of S. Fischer Verlag.

Aleksandar Hemon is the author of The Lazarus Project, which was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award, and three collections of short stories: The Question of Bruno; Nowhere Man, which was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Love and Obstacles. Born in Sarajevo, Hemon visited Chicago in 1992, intending to stay for a matter of months. While he was there, Sarajevo came under siege, and he was unable to return home. Hemon wrote his first story in English in 1995. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2003 and a “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation in 2004. Meine Eltern / Alles nicht dein Eigen was published in German translation in 2021. He lives in Chicago with his wife and daughter. 

Mimoza Hysa is an Albanian translator, writer and researcher. She graduated from the University of Tirana in Italian language and literature as well as in Italian Culture in Siena, Italy. She holds a PhD in literary sciences. As a literary translator she has translated over 30 literary works into Albanian, including books by Antonio Tabucchi, Giacomo Leopardi, Margaret Mazzatini and Claudio Magris. As a writer she has published four books, including “Bijat e gjeneralit” in 2019, a finalist for the “Kadare” and “Kult” prize and translated into Italian, Greek, German and Romanian. As a researcher she published the first monographic study on the creativity of Isuf Luzajt. For her work she has received several accolades. In the past four years Hysa has been directing book policies at the Ministry of the Culture and is director of the Publishing Centre for the Diaspora.

Miranda Jakiša is Professor of South Slavic Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Vienna. Her research focusses on Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian literature and culture from the 18th to the 21st century. In addition to literature, she deals with post-dramatic theatre, (post-)Yugoslavian film and aesthetic strategies of dissent. Most recently, she has been researching the connection between literature and cultural identity as well as post-migrant literature. In 2022, she published “South Slavic Vienna. On the Visibility and Presence of South Slavic Languages and Cultures in Contemporary Vienna”.

Ivana Jovanovska was born in Skopje, North Macedonia, in 1998. She is currently studying General and Comparative Literature at the Faculty of Philology “Blazhe Koneski”. She has taken part in numerous poetry readings and her poems have been published in the Greek literary magazine “Teflon” and the literary magazine “Sovremenost”, among others. To date, she has published two volumes of poetry. На ракавот на градот [On the Sleeve of the City] in 2021, followed by Номадски затвори [Prison of the Nomads] in 2023.

Amir Kamber, born in 1977 in Sanski Most, grew up in Prijedor, from where he had to flee in 1992. He lives in Sarajevo and Germany, works for Westdeutscher Rundfunk and writes in Bosnian and German.

Rene Karabash, born in 1989 in Lovech, Bulgaria, whose real name is Irena Ivanova, is an author, theatre director and actress. Her published works include a volume of poetry and her debut novel, published in 2018, for which she was awarded the Bulgarian Elias Canetti Prize. She has received awards at numerous film festivals, including Locarno and Sarajevo, for her role in the film Bezbog (2016). As a theatre director, she has directed plays based on Blue Eyes, Black Hair by Marguerite Duras and The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde among others. She is the founder of the Rabbit Hole, an academy for writers from the worlds of literature, film and theatre.

Nataša Kramberger, born 1983, is a writer, columnist, and organic farmer. She writes essays, reportages and commentaries for newspapers and magazines. For her debut novel Nebesa v robidah (2007) she received the European Union Prize for Literature (EUPL) in 2010. In 2011, she published Kaki vojaki (with Jana Kocjan), in 2014 an essay collection titled Brez zidu, and in 2016 Tujčice. Verfluchte Misteln (2021) was published in Slovene under the title Primerljivi hektarji in 2018. In summer she lives in Jurovski Dol, Slovenia, and runs a small biodynamic farm with the eco-art collective Zelena Centrala. In winter she lives in Berlin.

Liza Linde was born in 1989 in Reutlingen. She lives and works as a translator for German, Slovene and English in Ljubljana. Liza Linde translates prose, poetry and a variety of other texts in the fields of culture and politics. Her numerous literary translations include works by Goran Vojnović, Nicolas Mahler, Anja Golob, Nataša Kramberger, Peter Svetina, David Krančan & Žiga X Gombač, Jela Krečič, Tadej Golob, Glorjana Veber, Bronja Žakelj and Eva Mahkovic.

Kristine Listau, born in 1977 in the Soviet Union, grew up in the Rhineland and studied religious studies, politics and Slavic studies in Frankfurt am Main. She now lives in Berlin, where she runs Verbrecher Verlag together with Jörg Sundermeier.

Nikola Madžirov, born in Strumica in 1973, is one of North Macedonia’s most renowned poets. He publishes poems, essays and literary translations and is one of the coordinators of the international network Lyrikline. His works have been translated into forty languages. Compositions based on his poems have been written by the Italian composer Angelo Inglese and the American jazz musician Oliver Lake. Nikola Madžirov was awarded the Hubert Burda Prize for his poetry collection Преместен камен (Versetzter Stein; Hanser, 2007). Numerous other international prizes and scholarships emphasise the importance of his work.

Barbi Marković, born 1980 in Belgrade, studied German and has lived in Vienna since 2006. In 2011/2012 she was a writer-in-residence in Graz. In 2009, Marković caused a sensation with the Thomas Bernhard remix novel Ausgehen. In 2016, the novel Superheldinnen was published, for which she received the Alpha Literary Award, the Adelbert von Chamisso Award and the Priessnitz Prize in 2019. In 2017, Barbi Marković read at the Bachmann Prize, in 2018 Superheldinnen was staged at the Volkstheater Wien. She also authored numerous short stories, plays and radio plays. Most recently Minihorror (2023) was published by Residenz Verlag.

Eric Marr is a freelance presenter and journalist. Born in Leipzig and a law graduate, he has worked for ZDF for more than 20 years, including as a presenter and reporter. You can find more information at: www.ericmarr.net

Antonela Marušić (AKA Nora Verde), born 1974 in Dubrovnik, studied Croatian Language and Literature. While still a student, she published her first collection of poetry, Sezona bjegova (1994). She is the author of several novels, including Posudi mi smajl (2010) and Do isteka zaliha (2013). Her writing has been translated in many languages, including English, German, Slovene, Albanian and Macedonian. Nora Verde is a co-founder and editor of the feminist portal Vox Feminae.

Manfred Müller, born in Zell am See in 1969, studied German language and literature and art history in Vienna. He is the director of the Austrian Society for Literature (since 2014) and the Austrian Franz Kafka Society (since 2012) and a lecturer at the Institute for German Studies at the University of Vienna. Editor of several anthologies, mainly publications on 20th and 21st century literature. Most recently: Kafka träumt (Jung and Jung, 2024)

Nataša Nelević (1961) is a theatre critic, feminist theorist, writer and screenwriter. She is the author and editor of several books on theatre studies and women’s studies. Her publications include theatre plays, children’s books and novels. In 2003 she received the Sterija Prize for Theatre Criticism and in 2010 the Montenegrin National Theatre Prize for best contemporary play.

Vivian Perkovic, born 1978 in Winterberg, is a German journalist and television presenter. She studied German language and literature with a focus on media and theatre and South Slavic studies at the University of Hamburg. She currently works for 3sat Kulturzeit.

Radmila Petrović, born in 1996 in Užice/Serbia, is a poet and one of the most sought-after young voices from the former Yugoslavia. For her art she draws on her childhood memories spent in a village For urban audiences she opens up new perspectives on the human relationship to nature. Her themes also include family, village life, childhood traumas and female perspectives on the wars waged mostly by men.

Jörg Plath, born in 1960, is literary editor of “Deutschlandfunk Kultur” and writes for the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” and the “Neue Zürcher Zeitung”. He has been an editor, ghostwriter, and jury member (German Book Prize, International Literature Prize). He is currently on the jury of Weltempfänger.

Edo Popović, born in 1957, lives in Zagreb. He co-founded one of the most influential underground literary magazines in the former Yugoslavia, and his first novel “Ponoćni boogie” (“Midnight Boogie” 1987) became a cult classic of his generation. From 1991-1995, Edo Popović was one of Croatia’s best-known war correspondents, after which he published several novels and short story collections. Edo Popović is considered Croatia’s voice of social transformation after the fall of communism.

Sara Renar is a recording and performing artist from Zagreb, Croatia and praised as one of the best and bravest Balkan singer–songwriters from the new generation. Her music style can be described as experimental/indie/pop, mixing subtle melodies with electronic and theatrical elements. A former architect with a Master’s degree, she has left her office job to pursue a full time career in music. Performing mostly in her Croatian mother tongue, she has won multiple regional awards for her music and live performances, including a nomination for the IMPALA European indie album of the year.

Johanna Rohland-Lindner is Director of the Austrian Cultural Forum Berlin, which is part of the network of the Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs of the Republic of Austria. She previously worked as an Austrian diplomat in New York and Jordan.

Bojan Savić Ostojić, born in 1983, lives in Belgrade as an author and literary translator from French. “Nichts gehört niemandem” is his second novel. He has published several volumes of poetry and prose, autobiographical essays and a short novel, as well as the short story collection “Punkt”, which is also available in German.

Jernej Šček (1988) is part of the Slovenian minority in Trieste and is a philosopher, professor, journalist, essayist and translator. Šček teaches philosophy and history at the Trieste Lyceum, where he is also a contract lecturer in the humanities. He is also currently completing a doctorate in cultural sociology at the Faculty of Philosophy in Ljubljana. He researches the thought of the Italian Renaissance and makes an original contribution to the debate on neo-humanism. He also expresses his creativity in literary form. He is an important representative of Western Slovenianism and is regularly heard in public and professional debates in the field of humanities and national minorities. His bilingualism allows him to move freely between cultural initiatives in Slovenian and Italian. The author’s debut Café Italia ( 2023) is not only an essayistic work, but also a cultural European act.

Kaja Širok holds a doctorate in Cultural History. She engages in research in history, museology, heritage and oral history, studies on borders and nationality, and studies of collective memory. She publishes in Slovenian and international scientific journals. She is an active member of the academic council of the House of European History in Brussels and from September 2022 member of the Executive Board of the International Council of Museums (ICOM). As an assistant professor of contemporary history and memory studies, Dr Širok lectures at the University of Nova Gorica. From 2011 to 2021 she headed the Museum of Contemporary History of Slovenia (MNZS), in 2022 she was appointed as the State Secretary for Culture in the Cabinet of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Slovenia. She is committed to creating participatory, responsible and inclusive social environments that work for the benefit of the public and for the needs of all citizens. First and foremost, she believes that museums are spaces of social change.

Michael Stavarič , born in 1972 in Brno, lives as a freelance writer, translator and lecturer in Vienna. He would have liked to be a marine biologist in the past, but now he writes children’s books, novels, plays and poems, but is still interested in fauna and flora, especially marine animals. When he is not writing books, he spends his time making nature documentaries.

Shqipe Sylejmani was born in Prishtina, Kosovo, in 1988 and has lived in Switzerland since the age of four. She studied journalism and communication in Zurich and has been involved in promoting culture since 2018 as president of the “Kulturwerkstatt: Techno” association. In her first book, “Burden & Blessing”, the Kosovo-Swiss author processed her experiences of migration. “Dignity and Forgiveness” is the sequel, which tells of the waves of migration of Albanians to other countries.

After completing his master’s in Sociology, Federico Tenca Montini enrolled in a joint PhD programme at the universities in Teramo and Zagreb (mentor prof. Tvrtko Jakovina). Later he dealt with various aspects of the Slovene minority in Italy during two post-doc researches at the University in Trieste. He has authored two books (2014 and 2020, the latter also available in Croatian (2021) and Slovenian (2023) translations) and scientific publications in Italian, English and Croatian. Besides his research commitments in the frame of ERC ‘Open Borders’, he is currently participating in various research programmes for the Regional Institute of History of the Resistance Movement and the Contemporary Age (Irsrec FVG).

Tatiana Țîbuleac was born in 1978 in Chișinău, Republic of Moldova, and has Moldovan and Romanian nationality. She holds a Degree in Journalism. She made her debut as a writer in 2014 with a collection of short stories Fabule Moderne – Modern Tales. In 2017, her first novel appeared: Vara în care mama a avut ochii verzi. It was awarded the prize of the Writer´s Union of Moldova, the prize of the Observator Cultural literary magazine in Bucharest and the Lyceum prize at the FILIT festival in Iași. In Spain it was awarded the Booksellers Recommend 2020 Prize for Fiction and Calamo Prize. Grădina de sticlă is her second novel and won 2019 EU Prize for Literature. Her books are translated into ten languages. Since 2008 she has been living in Paris.

Suzana Tratnik, born in Murska Sobota in 1963, is one of the most important Slovenian writers of our time. She studied sociology in Ljubljana and earned her master’s degree in gender anthropology. Her work includes short story collections, the novels Ime mi je Damjan (2001), Tretji svet (2007) and the young adult novel Tombola ali življenje! (2016, nominated for the “Modra ptica” award). Suzana Tratnik was awarded the Prešern Prize in 2007. Her texts have been translated into more than twenty languages. She lives and works in Ljubljana as a writer, translator and journalist.

Annemarie Türk, born in 1953 in Klagenfurt, studied history, political science and Slovenian language as well as cultural management and sponsoring. From 1992 to 2013, she was head of cultural promotion and sponsorship at KulturKontakt Austria and was responsible for cultural cooperation with and in 15 countries in Eastern and Southeast Europe. Since April 2013 she has been working as a freelance curator and lecturer for various educational institutions, cultural organisations and universities.

Lea Vajsova is a PhD in Sociology and Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski, where she gives lectures and seminars on Sociology of Ideologies, Sociology of Power, History of Sociology, etc. She is a member of the feminist collective LevFem. Her research interests include critical theory, social movements, everyday life and popular culture.

Valerius has been a bookseller in Trier for 15 years, currently in an indie bookshop. Before that he was for many years the manager of the university bookshop. Florian Valerius, born in 1982, is also one of the most successful German-language bookstagrammers. Under @literarischernerd, he presents two to three new novels and illustrated books per week and shares with his online community of well over 25,000 followers his experiences as a reader and bookseller. In addition, he regularly holds live talks with people from the book industry.

László Végel, born in 1941 in Srbobran/Sentomaš, studied Hungarian Language and Literary Sciences in Novi Sad and Philosophy in Belgrade. With Danilo Kiš, Aleksandar Tišma and Ottó Tolnai he is one of the great authors of Vojvodina. Végel published his first novel in 1967: the novel Egy makró emlékiratai [Memoirs of a Pimp] was, according to Péter Esterházy, “a milestone for modern Hungarian literature”. Since then, several novels, plays and volumes of essays have followed. They have been translated into several European languages. László Végel lives as a member of the Hungarian minority in Novi Sad.