24th Vilenica International Literary Festival

2 -6 September 2009

The 24th Vilenica International Literary Festival, organized by the Slovene Writers&39;Association and the Vilenica Cultural Society will be held from 2 to 6 September. On the evenings before the Festival, with events in Ljubljana, Gorizia (Italy), Maribor, Koper, Celje and Pliskovica, as well as during the regular and accompanying programme in Lipica, Trieste, Štanjel, Sežana, Bilje and in the Vilenica Cave, the Festival will play host to approximately 40 authors from more than 20 countries; in addition, there will be a number of academics, editors, publishers and cultural mediators from Central European and other countries.

A special place at the Festival is held by both the recipient of the Vilenica International LiteraryPrize and the spotlight on the Slovene author. Besides the grand Vilenica prize we will present, at the Štanjel matinee, the Crystal Vilenica for the best contribution to the Vilenica Almanac; we will also present the winner of the Young Vilenica, which will be awarded by the Vilenica Cultural Society. In cooperation with the Central European Initiative, for the fourth time in a row, a young author will receive a CEI Writers-in-Residence Award.

The theoretical component will revolve around the motto Who chooses? The mechanisms for choosing books for a market and in the media will be held under the microscope during the CEI round table and the 7th International Comparative Literature colloquium, and during the Festival’s accompanying programme we will discuss who it is that selects young authors.

Literature from Flanders will be in the foreground and presented within the framework of the project “Lesser-Known Literatures of Europe at Vilenica.” Authors&39; visits will be accompanied by the publication of an anthology entitled Ruimte – already the fourth in the Vilenica Anthology series. After presenting the literary activities of Slovenian minorities we will, with the presentation of Slovenian-Argentine literature, devote ourselves this year to literary creation by Slovenes elsewhere in the world.

Among new books readers will find the Vilenica Almanac 2009, the English translation of the novelA Difficult Spring  by Boris Pahor as well as a translation of works by the 2008 Vilenica prize winner Andrzej Stasiuk in two languages.