Skopje, 29 September 2025 (MIA) -- Under the slogan "On Writing Matters," the 11th Bookstar European Literature Festival begins at the Cultural and Information Center at 7:30 pm, as "a call to a conversation about the essence of writing, about the author's responsibility and freedom and about the intimate, often invisible writer's work," according to organizers.

Organized by Antolog publishing house, the festival will run through Oct. 2 and host conversations with authors, book signings, podcasts and readings.

This year's festival slogan was inspired by Krste Misirkov (1874–1926) and his views laid out in his best-known work, "On Macedonian Matters."

"Not only did he lay the foundations of the Macedonian language, contemporary Macedonian literature as well as cultural and national self-awareness but he also displayed an intellectual and writing scale that we have rarely seen in our environment," organizers said.

"With a small lexical and semantic transformation of the title of his book, the slogan shifts the emphasis from ethnic and social issues to creative and literary processes, i.e., the 'matters' crucial and significant for the art of writing both in Macedonia and in Europe," they said.

This year's participants include Macedonian writers Kalina Maleska, Aleksandar Prokopiev, Ermis Lafazanovski, Vladimir Martinovski, Olivera Kjorveziroska, Zharko Kujundzhiski, Mihajlo Sviderski, Dijana Petrova, Ivan Shopov, Sanja Mihajlovikj Kostadinovska and Ivan Antonovski as well as foreign writers Ahmet Ümit, Seray Şahiner, Petra Klabouchová, Meinhard Rauchensteiner, Ondřej Štindl and Sholeh Rezazadeh.

The winner of this year's Bookstar Award for best book is Blazhe Minevski for his "A Tail in the Mouth" (Antolog, 2025).

The winners of the 2025 Dragi Award for best translation of a Macedonian author are Christina E. Kramer and Rawley Grau for translating Aco Shopov's "The Long Coming of the Fire” (Deep Vellum, 2023).

Organizers will also award the 2025 Dragi Award for best translation into Macedonian, they said. mr/