ZAGREB

Sunday, June 2

14.00 FESS 2019 OPENING: NO FORMALITIES, PLEASE!
Beware: Croatian writers are cooking!
Zoran Ferić, Senko Karuza, Robert Mlinarec, Ivica Prtenjača

20.00 LITERARY EUROPE LIVE PLUS
CONVERSATION
Stories of Fellow-Passengers
Miljenko Jergović, Semezdin Mehmedinović
In 1986 or 1987, on a train from Sarajevo to Zagreb, Semezdin Mehmedinović and Miljenko Jergović shared their compartment with an unknown, silent woman who confided with them that she was “taking her father home”, in a casket travelling in that same train. Thirty years on, and neither the two of them nor we know anything about the deceased passenger. But we do know what Jergović and Mehmedinović write about on their own and to one another, and we are going to hear what they talk about and what they think is best left unspoken. If these two Sarajevo writers are expatriates with a permanent place of residence in language, does this language sometimes feel narrow? How mistaken are those who think that Jergović keeps preaching his and other people’s stories, giving them a voice they have been deprived of, while Mehmedinović always tells only his own stories, which there are more than enough for several bodies and several lives? What word would make their writing impossible, and what word are they missing? And who will – for someone has to – tell the story of that dead fellow-passenger?
Moderated by: Đurđica Čilić
STUDENT CENTRE, &TD THEATRE, LARGE HALL,
Savska cesta 25, Zagreb

Monday, June 3
17.00 IN COLLABORATION WITH CEKAPE
An Hour at the Short Story Workshop:
Think Freely, Yet Subtly, Alan Titley
What are the makings of a good short story? What does a story need to be good, to touch you? After all, how does a story come into being and is there a formula how to write one? These are just some of the questions that Alan Titley, Irish novelist, short story writer, dramatist and a university professor, and young writer Sven Popović are going to ask. An Hour at the Short Story Workshop is organized in collaboration with the Center for Creative Writing. Join us and write away with us!Moderated by: Sven Popović BOOKSA CLUB, Fra Grge Martića 14d, Zagreb.

18.00 LITERARY EUROPE LIVE PLUS
IN COLLABORATION WITH CROATIAN P.E.N. CENTER
CONVERSATION
The Right to a Story
Melatu Uche Okorie, Tomica Bajsić
Homo Narrans, the topic of the 18th edition of FESS, questions the ability and the need of human beings to tell stories and through them see and make sense of the world around us. Sometimes, those stories do not agree with ours, with the ones we tell about our own societies and our own values – which only makes them more precious, even though perhaps harder to hear. Born in Nigeria, Melatu Uche Okorie is an author who turned her experience of eight and a half years of asylum seeking in Ireland into stories that placed her among the strongest voices of new Irish literature. Melatu Uche Okorie and Tomica Bajsić, an award-winning writer and the president of Croatian P.E.N. Center, together with Cyrille Cartier, in a conversation on the importance of the right to tell our story.
Moderated by: Cyrille Cartier
BOOKSA CLUB, Fra Grge Martića 14d, Zagreb

19.00 BOOK PRESENTATION
Traveller of the Century
Andrés Neuman, Ana Hadžić
“The literature of the twenty-first century will belong to Neuman and a few of his blood brothers.” Roberto Bolaño wrote announcing Andres Neuman. Traveler of the Century, awarded (among others) by the prestigious Alfaguara Prize, is a dialogue between a great classical novel and avant-garde prose, a bridge between our history and our global present day lives. This is a book that asks what it means to be a stranger, that talks about multiculturalism and nationalism, about emancipation of women, a novel that invites us to break down the barriers, whether the ones on maps, in relations or in the language.
Moderated by: Srđan Sandić
STUDENT CENTRE, MM CENTRE, Savska cesta 25, Zagreb

20.30 LITERARY EUROPE LIVE PLUS
READING
Homo Narrans
Rosa Liksom (FIN), Semezdin Mehmedinović (BIH/USA), Melania G. Mazzucco (ITA), Elvis Malaj (ALB/ITA), Antonio Ortuño (MEX)
STUDENT CENTRE, MM CENTRE, Savska cesta 25, Zagreb

Tuesday, June 4
18.00 CONVERSATION AND READING
On What Hurts
Drago Glamuzina, Goran Samardžić
The story and the novel, gentleness and brutality, lust for life, honesty without holding back, toying with autobiography, the readiness to share the most intimate moments in the text – all of these are points of contact between two award-winning writers: the Bosnian novelist and short story writer Goran Samardžić and Drago Glamuzina, a renowned Croatian poet and writer. On where literature and life meet and why we write about what hurts – two writers in a conversation with the third – Edi Matić.
Moderated by: Edi Matić
SAMOBOR CITY LIBRARY, Ulica Miroslava Krleže 9, Samobor

11:00 CONVERSATION
Andrés Neuman, Antonio Ortuño
Moderated by: Gordana Matić i Maja Zovko
LIBRARY OF THE FACULTY OF HUMANITIES
AND SOCIAL SCIENCES, MULTIMEDIA HALL,
Ivana Lučića 3, Zagreb

17.00 IN COLLABORATION WITH CEKAPE
CONVERSATION
An Hour at the Short Story Workshop:
Place, Character and Plot
Josip Novakovich
Every story sets its own parameters and actions, its inner play that allows us to deem it successful or not. That’s what Josip Novakovich says, the short story master, writer and creative writing teacher who will use this hour to reveal his tricks, to pass on his knowledge. To teach you how to make a short story interesting because, as he says, that’s the only thing it has to accomplish.
Moderated by: Miroslav Mićanović
BOOKSA CLUB, Fra Grge Martića 14d, Zagreb

18.30 LITERARY EUROPE LIVE PLUS
BOOK PRESENTATION
I Am With You: The Story of Brigitte
Melania G. Mazzucco, Ana Badurina, Neven Vulić
When Brigitte Zébé, an illegal immigrant from Congo, arrives in Rome, she spends a few days wandering around Termini Station, not knowing what country she is in, unable to communicate because she does not speak the language, and digging through trash looking for food. But stories want to be told.
Brigitte will meet Melania, the writer, and tell her her story: about a nurse from Matadi, who helped an enemy of the regime and so ended in prison, barely saved her own life and managed to escape just by pure chance. True and dramatic, this is a documentary novel that tells a story about immigrants’ reality – about the way in which the Italians and the Europeans see the immigrants.
Moderated by: Tatjana Peruško
ITALIAN CULTURAL INSTITUTE, Preobraženska 4, Zagreb

19.00 BOOK PRESENTATION
Compartment No. 6
Rosa Liksom
How many and what kind of stories can be heard on a train between Moscow and Ulaanbaatar, when you are a young Finnish woman, and an ex-soldier walks into your compartment, a Russian who just can’t stop talking, as time stretches, and everything around you is in a state of motion: “the snow, the water, the air, the trees, the wind, the cities, the villages, and the thoughts.” Eavesdropping on the two unusual fellow-passengers, in a train that pushes its way through the Syberia and last days of the Soviet Union, Rosa Liksom wrote an exceptional novel.
Moderated by: Mima Simić
STUDENT CENTRE, MM CENTRE, Savska cesta 25, Zagreb

20.30 LITERARY EUROPE LIVE PLUS
READING AND FESS SHORT STORY AWARD CEREMONY
Homo Narrans
Andrés Neuman (ARG/ESP), Goran Samardžić (BIH), Adania Shibli (PSE), Melatu Uche Okorie (NGA/IRL), Alan Titley (IRL)
STUDENT CENTRE, MM CENTRE, Savska cesta 25, Zagreb

Wednesday, June 5
18.00 COMICS-CONVERSATION IN
TWO SQUARES
Marko Dješka, Irena Jukić Pranjić
Marko Dješka mastered the language of comics as a young boy, drawing hundreds of pages of his fanciful world. He has kept his child-play characters until today, adding into his oeuvre many more, from the ones who speak about his vegan activism, to those who talk about his passionate following of TV stand-up comedians who he effortlessly turns into protagonists of his own comics.
BOOKSA CLUB, Fra Grge Martića 14d, Zagreb

19.00 CONVERSATION
TransAtlantic
Colum McCann
One of the most celebrated contemporary Irish writers, the author of bestsellers translated into forty-some languages, and the winner of the most prestigious literary awards (National Book Award, IMPAC Dublin Award, Pushcart Prize…) has a New York address and is, in more ways than one, a writer between continents. Europe and North America, but also the novel and the short story – how distant or close are they, and what does a writer take along when he is crossing the oceans between them? How does one exist in between or quite specifically: what does Colum McCann leave behind and what does he find on his transatlantic voyages?
Moderated by: Mima Simić
VINYL, Bogovićeva ulica 3, Zagreb

20.30 READING
Homo Narrans
Maša Kolanović, Zoran Malkoč, Josip Novakovich, Goran Paladin, Jelena Zlatar Gamberožić
Moderated by: Roman Simić
VINYL, Bogovićeva ulica 3, Zagreb

Thursday, June 6
18.00 COMICS-CONVERSATION IN
TWO SQUARES
Helena Janečić, Irena Jukić Pranjić
For her stories, Helena Janečić uses the language of the Ameri can and Italian mainstream comic book in order to speak about the topics that mostly do not fall within the generic framework of the styles they come out from. She parodies the superhero comic by using her heroine, Horny Dyke, who uses her superpowers to help the damsels in distress to, for example, wash their windows, and then takes them into her arms, as is only fitting when we are talking about those who save and those who are saved, shedding a light on many aspects of contemporary queer discourse.
BOOKSA CLUB, Fra Grge Martića 14d, Zagreb

19.00 BOOK PRESENTATION
Chasing Homer
László Krasznahorkai
Upon the invitation of his Croatian publisher László Krasznahorkai has made a journey to Dalmatia in the fall of 2016. Chasing Homer, a novella Krasznahorkai has written on that occasion, is at once a story inspired by the Mediterranean landscape and artworks by his friends — drawings by Max Neumann and drum-solos by Eli Keszler. Both artists, in their turn, have responded to Krasznahorkai’s novella by creating new works, thus making Chasing Homer a unique triptych or an ensemble of literature, painting and music. A collaboration among major contemporary artists, Chasing Homer is a document of incessant experimentation, very much alike Odysseus’ restless voyage.
Moderated by: Petar Milat
KAPTOL BOUTIQUE CINEMA, Nova Ves 17, Zagreb

20.30 READING
Poets’ Stories
Marija Andrijašević, Miroslav Kirin, Suzana Matić, Antun Zlatko Stolica, Marina Šur Puhlovski
What kind of stories do poets write? Does a background in poetry imply some superpowers or perhaps superproblems, when one steps on the ground of prose, even if it were short? Is the short story closer to the novel, by the logic of kinship in prose, or to the poem – by the logic of precision, language, rhythm? Five authors and Miroslav Mićanović, the award-winning poet and writer, in a conversation on the theory and practice of being between poetry and the short story.
Moderated by: Miroslav Mićanović
VINYL, Bogovićeva ulica 3, Zagreb

Friday, June 7
20.00 FESS 2019 CLOSING PARTY AND G-SPOT
Ivan Jozić, Tihana Lazović, Colum McCann, Eley Williams
Made after the story of the same title written by Colum McCann, one of the most important contemporary Irish authors, the short film Everything in This Country Must was nominated for Oscar, while the performances by Tihana Lazović, one of the best young Croatian actresses, promise to sooner or later take her in front of the Academy’s voters (and then, no doubt, even further). Eley Williams’ first book of stories announced the arrival of a new, fresh, and original voice of the British literary scene, just as was the case with Ivan Jozić in Croatia. Conversation, reading, film and music: the 18th edition of the FESS climaxes with G-spot!
Moderated by: Vladimir Šagadin
CULTURE FACTORY, SMALL PLANT, Šubićeva 2, Zagreb

RIJEKA

Wednesday, June 5
12.00 WELCOME TO RIJEKA
City Hall Reception

18.00 EXHIBITION
#NONdependent: To Write Oneself
Drug Abuse Treatment Association “Vida” invited all women, especially women who dealt or are still dealing with the addiction problem, either personal or within their families, to submit creative work that speaks about their problem and struggle – about their ups and downs, losses and lessonslearned. One of the objectives was to “write oneself”.
BOOK CAFFE DNEVNI BORAVAK,
Ciottina 12a, Rijeka

18.00 CONVERSATION
Alan Titley, Eley Williams
Moderated by: Aidan O’Malley, Antonija Primorac
FACULTY OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES RIJEKA,
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE,
LECTURE ROOM F-139, Sveučilišna avenija 4, Rijeka

19.00 IN COLLABORATION WITH CEKAPE
CONVERSATION AND FILM SCREENING
Rijeka Taxi Stories
Željka Horvat Čeč, Davor Mandić, Dunja Matić, Tea Tulić, Milan Zagorac
Five Rijeka cabbies and five Rijeka writers (for who can tell stories better than they!) got together around five Rijeka stories, which (for that’s what happens with good literature) do not talk just about Rijeka. From a ride and a talk to a text – the authors of this exciting literary ride around Rijeka tell us how the stories within the Drive me a Story Project came into being, as we screen five short films by Maša Drndić and Igor Paulić, created in collaboration with Rijeka cabbies and writers.
Moderated by: Vid Barić
PALACH YOUTH CULTURAL CENTRE,
Kružna ul. 8, Rijeka

20.30 READING
Homo Narrans
Elvis Malaj (ALB/ITA), Antonio Ortuño (MEX), Goran Samardžić (BIH), Alan Titley (IRL), Tea Tulić (HRV), Eley Williams (GBR)
PALACH YOUTH CULTURAL CENTRE
Kružna ul. 8, Rijeka

Thursday, June 6
19.00 CONVERSATION
Writers and Migrations
Andrés Neuman, Antonio Ortuño
In the beginning was the migration. Not only the one that, following the Spanish Civil War, took Andrés Neuman’s parents to Argentina, and Antonio Ortuño’s parents to Mexico – but also the ones these two authors come back to in their work: migration as a necessity, a need, a choice, and maybe even as destiny. The winners of prestigious literary awards, the authors Granta Magazine selected as the best young Spanish language novelists, talk about borders and crossings, in literature and beyond.
Moderated by: Ela Varošanec
PALACH YOUTH CULTURAL CENTRE,
Kružna ul. 8, Rijeka

20.30 LITERARY EUROPE LIVE PLUS
READING AND FESS JUNIOR SHORT STORY AWARD CEREMONY
Homo Narrans
Senko Karuza (HRV), Dunja Matić (HRV), Colum McCann (IRL/USA), Semezdin Mehmedinović (BIH/USA), Andrés Neuman (ARG/ESP), Adania Shibli (PSE)
PALACH YOUTH CULTURAL CENTRE
Kružna ul. 8, Rijeka

Friday, June 7
11.00 FESS JUNIOR SHORT STORY WINNER READING
You’ve got to hear this story Young stories, the stories by the young writers, more or less of the same age as this festival – those awarded and those who awarded the FESS with their texts – are saved for the very end of our Rijeka program. What are the stories we’ve got to hear from the ones who are coming, the ones who are already here? The brave kids with a story in a conversation with the Rijeka writer, comic book artist and mentor, the ever-never Enver Krivac.
Moderated by: Enver Krivac
RIHUB, Ul. Ivana Grohovca 1/a, Rijeka

VENUES
Zagreb: STUDENT CENTRE, &TD THEATRE, LARGE HALL, MM CENTRE, Savska cesta 25 / BOOKSA CLUB, Fra Grge Martića 14d / FACULTY OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES, Ivana Lučića 3 / ITALIAN CULTURAL INSTITUTE, Preobraženska 4 / VINYL, Bogovićeva ulica 3 / KAPTOL BOUTIQUE CINEMA, Nova Ves 17 / CULTURE FACTORY, SMALL PLANT, Šubićeva 2; Rijeka: PALACH YOUTH CULTURAL CENTRE, Kružna ul. 8; BOOK CAFFE DNEVNI BORAVAK, Ciottina 12a; FACULTY OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES RIJEKA, Sveučilišna avenija 4 / RIHUB, Ul. Ivana Grohovca 1/a; Samobor: SAMOBOR CITY LIBRARY, Ulica Miroslava Krleže 9