The festival was held from 2nd to 5th of July 2014. There were four evenings of reading (2nd and 3rd of July in Kikinda, 4th in Timisoara / Szeged / Zrenjanin and 5th in Belgrade). On the third night, the participants divided into three groups and each group went to one of the three cities.
The ninth edition of short story Festival Kikinda Short will be held from 2nd till 5th July 2014 in five towns and three countries. This year’s festival is the realisation of the idea to devolop cooperation between Banat’s towns – Kikinda, Timisoara, Szeged and Zrenjanin, with this cultural manifestation. Twenty short story writers from 14 different countries will read their stories in Kikinda on 2nd and 3rd July, on 4th July, divided into three groups, they will present themselves in Zrenjanin, Timisoara and Szeged, while the closing evening of the festival will be held in Belgrade on 5th July.
This year’s country – the guest of honor is Liechtenstein. Three young authors, supported by The Foundation of Culture of Liechtenstein, will present the literature of their country, insufficiently known here. The host od this year’s edition of the festival is Srdan Papic, the guest of honor is Jovica Acin who is choosing the surprise guest.
On the ninth edition of the festival the authors come from 14 countries : Albania – Eljan Tanini, Bosnia and Herzegovina – Faruk Šehić, Montenegro – Ilija Đurović, Croatia – Robert Perišić, Cyprus – Maria A. Ioannou, Liechtenstein – Anna Ospelt, Daniel Batliner and Patrick Kaufmann, Hungary – Mán-Várhegyi Réka, Macedonia – Dragan Georgijevski, Poland – Ziemowit Szczerek, Portugal – Joao Tordo, Slovenia – Dijana Matković, Ukraina – Galina Tkachuk and Dzvenyslava Matiyash and Serbia – Ivan Antić, Jovica Aćin, the surprise guest and Srđan Papić.
The festival will have young authors from five countries which didn’t have present untill this edition, and for the first time the festival will have participants from all ex-YU countries this year.
The festival has been supported by the Ministry of Culture and Information of Serbia, Provincial Secretariat for Culture and Public Information and the Municipality of Kikinda, as well as The Foundation of Culture Liechtenstein and the Ministry of Education and Culture of Cyprus.
The partners of The Assosiation Kikinda Short in Kikinda is The Public Library “Jovan Popovic“, Cultural Center “Parobrod” in Belgrade, József Attila Kör in Szeged, The Public Library “Zarko Zrenjanin“, Assosiation Skaska and City of Zrenjanin and Biblioteca Judeţeană Timiş in Timisoara.
Photographs of the third evening at Kikinda Short 09 in Zrenjanin – 4th July 2014
Photographs of the second evening at Kikinda Short 09 – 3rd July 2014
Photographs of the first evening at Kikinda Short 09 – 2nd July 2014
Short with Patrick Kaufmann
Are there any stories that you write merely to be left to “rest in the drawer” without publishing?
Most of my works are published, which I did not published are those which I have not been written. I think all works, even when I read them in the Public, those are Published.
Is your work influenced by the praise of readers?
I believe that my surrounding continually influenced myself. Reader does not affect me. Finding stories is my personal affair.
Short with Maria A. Ioannou
How are you affected by the contact with the audience?
The audience gives me the chance to expose myself and my words, the chance to “fall”, hoping that someone’s mind or heart catches me on the way.
Is writing a pleasant or a tedious process?
Pleasant because it offers you a taste of eternity. Tedious because it’s just a taste.
Short with Anna Ospelt
How do your closest friends look at your writing?
I hope they like it. Many of my friends are “creative”, the make music, art or literature and it is nice to share that passion and understand each other. For my first book, one of my best friends wrote the sociological afterword and another was my editor – it was really great and supporting, that those two people where part of the process.
What would be a success in writing?
To be happy while writing.
Short with Daniel Batliner
Do you make corrections of already published stories?
Yes, all the time. Like I’m moving on as an author my stories move on as stories. I am constantly working on them and experimenting with new sentences and terms to see how the audience reacts.
Is it possible to find yourself attached to a person from a short story?
Yes and no. My stories are about situations everyone can find himself or herself in. That means that I obviously know what my characters are going through, that most of the listeners know it too but the character itself is usually nor representing me nor anyone else.
Short with Dragan Georgievski
Do you have any recommendation for reading?
Kurt Schwitters, Daniil Kharms, Tristan Tzara, Henri Michaux, Hugo Ball, Woody Allen…
What makes a writer different from other people?
Well, I think it’s obvious, they wear sandals.
Short with Dijana Matković
How do your closest friends look at your writing?
I couldn’t tell, aren’t the reactions of friends always predictable when it comes to writing of their friends? It’s more interesting with others. For example, I didn’t know how would react to my collection of short stories named In the name of father – my father. I was afraid how would he accept that character of father who is always leaving, fighting, cheating and so on. Would it be hard for him to see himself that way? After many delays I brought him the book and suggested nervously : „Look, read this, that rather not, this is funny, but this at the beginnig…“ One moment he looked at me, closed the book, and while he was walking to his workroom he sudenly turned around and enthusiastically told me . „Daddy’s debut!“ Hah, that was it. Now – my friends are also proud, but everything is less complicated with them.
Spritzer or beer?
Beer, absolutely. Beer is one among the rare things that even the most complicated people can’t complicate because only two things matter : favourite brand and how cold it is.
Short with Galyna Tkachuk
Is your work influenced by the praise of readers?
The most interesting reader responses I’ve ever had are strange and unusual advices. Especially when young riders try to suggest me some themes for the next book… Unexpected thought of a reader is the best praise.
Is it possible to find yourself attached to a person from a short story?
I could even fall in love with the hero of a short poem.
Short with Dzvenyslava Matiyash
How are you affected by contact with the audience?
Often I have a strong feeling that everything is connected in this world. I write stories, because there are people who are willing to listen to them and waiting for me to write them. As I am waiting for somebody’s music, pictures and films. So I like to meet people who come to listen to my stories. These meetings with the audience usually become a great inspiration for me. Nevertheless, sometimes I’m afraid of them – afraid of swearing, trembling hands and my hoarse voice I can’t recognize. Then I have to breathe deeply and look at the audience, to get eye contact with somebody’s eyes – black, brown, blue or green. These eyes are like mine, I think then, and calm down.
Do you make correction of already published stories?
Yes, I want to make corrections all the time. So it`s a problem for me to give the final version of the text to the publisher. I always want to have few hours (or days, or weeks?) to correct or to change something. Strange feeling and strange desire to rewrite, recreate the world described in the texts. What for I wonder? To make this world better? More interesting? More alive and vivid? More perfect?
That’s why sometimes it’s better to accept the text as it is, let it go and live its own life. And start waiting for new stories and books. Dreaming about correcting them…
Short with Faruk Šehić
Is your work influenced by the praise of readers?
Praises are pleasent, saying the opposite would be a lie, but that doesn’t mean one should live on that. Praises shouldn’t influence the writing, otherwise writer would connive his audience and there is nothing more disgusting than that. Praises are positive, but that doesn’t have much in common with writing itself. Writing is something completly different, it’s very difficult and lonesome work.
Where is the start and where the end of writing?
Writing does not start or end, at least as long as the writer is alive. It’s an everlasting process. Everything you’ve ever seen and thought you would forget, that’s something that once might be the construction for poem or short story. That click matters.
Ostensibly, writing stops when a book comes out, but you never work on one book and always write parallelly, so there’s no rest. Adding writing for newspapers to that, and you might feel as a slave of writing, who sometimes can buy sense of freedoby the money earned.
Short with Ilija Đurović
If you had a task to sell books of short stories, what would be your story?
The only prose literal genre you may read from the beginnig to the end more than ten times in a day! If it was good for Borges, Carver and Chekhov it would be good for you!
Can you describe your workspace?
My workspace is a surface of 21×14 cm, that’s the surface of my computer’s screen I’ve been writng on for a while. Those are also the dimensions of my recently published, first book, the product of all my workspaces until now. Everything around the screen is changing with every moving. Every room with computer, a little electricity and lots of water is good enough. At this moment, my workspace is a room in a studio – euphemism used for obscenely small apartments. I don’t know how the surroundings for my computer will look after Kikinda Short, because straight from the airport I’ll be going to the new appartment. This is the movement of my 21×14 to new space, just a few quarts away from the one I’m sending this response from.
Short with Man-Várhegyi Réka
Do you make corrections of already published stories?
Only when I publish a short story again. It may happen that a short story gets published in a literary magazine, then maybe in an anthology, and a book of collected stories. However, the corrections I make are small. I usually delete a few words so that the text would become shorter and shorter.
Do you find yourself surprised while writing?
Yes. At the beginning I always think I know the whole story that I am planning to write. But once I start writing, the story changes. I used to be annoyed by that but now I enjoy this part of the writing the most.
Short with Srđan Papić
Are there any stories that you write merely to be left to “rest in the drawer” without publishing?
Everything I write “rests in the drawer”. Except, someone makes me show it, like you did.
Short with Eljan Tanini
Do you have any recommendation for reading?
Bertolt Brecht, Parfume of Philippe Claudel, Alda Merini, Dino Buzzati, Vladimir Nabokov, PIER PAOLO PASOLINI, Forugh Farrokhzad, Walt Whitman, Woody Allen, Haruki Murakami and please the words of Fabrizio De André
What would be a success in writing?
My opinion in writing success comes only from the things that never happen. And one other: Write in coffee and know people as much as you need, no more. Do not forget the notebook with you.
Short with João Tordo
Where is the start and where the end of writing?
It starts when things are already difficult and it ends when something has been accepted.
Is it possible to find yourself attached to a person from a short story?
I’ve grown attached to many characters from short stories, wishing they were also part of a novel so I could spend more time with them.
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