We have four short story writers coming to us from Catalonia: Lolita Bosch, Jordi Puntí, Llucia Ramis and Màrius Serra. Those keeping up with the FESS will recognize a familiar face – yes, Jordi Puntí is back! His collection of short stories "Animals tristos" ("Sad Animals") has already been translated into Croatian, and since his visit in 2008, he has also published his first novel "Maletes perdudes" ("Lost Luggage"). Lolita Bosch writes good and she writes plenty. In the last five years she has published 10 books, and has even organized several literary festivals (we don't know how she does it?!). Lucia Ramis received her first literary award as a teenager. Today she publishes stories and novels, writes for newspapers and magazines, and she has also done some work for radio and television. Another writer present in the media is Màrius Serra. He finds pleasure of reading and writing even in the smallest of forms – word games, and he claims their ingenious principle to be universal, although they cannot be translated. We could borrow his words and say the vibes of the festival cannot be retold, but only experienced, so come, hear, ask and feast with our Catalonians!  

Nine Lives of a Festival (And There Will Be More!)

Weaving together a fabric of a festival (as all who have tried it know) is never easy. Sometimes it seems your whole life is taken up by this little miracle, from the first e-mails sent to the writers and their replies, over a thousand and one little things that need to be done, to the sign-off on one of the festival’s stages a year later.

But what saves the day (besides the help from our partners and sponsors, of course!) is the feeling that every edition of the festival, besides taking something from you, also gives and possesses something and that something is – no more and no less – one whole new life.

Writers’ names become faces, voices and laughter; texts echo uniquely and inhabit the places we all love and know, the special chemistry between the audience, the writers and the hosts can only be created once, and only once. And this is, we feel, what the festival should be about and this is how we have worked on it. For nine years in a row. 

So the only way one can write about the ninth edition of the festival is by guessing, because you cannot be sure about anything that has not happened yet.

Still, we are sure about one thing: we are incredibly lucky that this year’s festival will be marked by a very special partner – Catalonia. Catalan writers are ever more present in Croatian bookstores, but we believe that both Croatian readers and publishers could/should/would love even more. Hence the numerous readings and promotions, hence the translation workshop at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zadar. The Catalan national literary team at this year’s Festival of the European Short Story is composed of (a big thank you to the Ramon Llul Institute!): Lolita Bosch, Jordi Puntí, Llucia Ramis and Marius Serra – come and see why!

But just so not all of the festival’s burden falls on the Catalan (nevertheless strong) back, here to help them carry the burden are other writers as well: two Americans – the 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner for Literature Elizabeth Strout and the 2009 Village Voice Best Young Writer Wells Tower. Our guest this year is also one of the most prominent writers of the English-speaking world, the winner of this year’s Sunday Times Best Short Story Award, New Zealand writer C. K. Stead, followed by (the Europeans at last!) – the dynamic duo of the Irish literature: writer Kevin Barry and editor Declan Meade; a Finnish writer writing in Swedish Susanne Ringell and an English writer residing in Berlin Clare Wigfall; and two more captivated by Berlin (or the other way around): the cult Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai and the Czech writer Jaroslav Rudiš, whose cult status (thanks for asking!) is well under way. The useful habit of promoting cultural workers we can learn a lot from continues this year as well via the presence of Oscar Sipán and Mario de los Santos, writers and editors of the Spanish publishing house Tropo Editores and Alexandra Buchler, director of Literature Across Frontiers, and there are of course excellent young Croatian writers with their new books: Maja Hrgović, Mario Kovač, Zoran Malkoč, Zoran Tomić, Neven Vulić, and the one and only Senko Karuza…

Need I say more?

Come and spend our (ninth) life with us!

On behalf of the team

Roman Simić Bodrožić