In 2023, the International Literature Festival «Bookstan. No East. No West.» continues to build a platform for cooperation between cultural workers, authors, publishers and translators from different BiH cities, and to provide greater support to literature and publishing in BiH and the region. Accordingly, with the eighth edition of the festival, we are launching several new, special programs.
"Young corner" in American corner Sarajevo
The special program "Mladi kutak" is dedicated to literature for children and young people of various genres, and is realized in cooperation with Sarajevo's American Corner. During the four days of the festival, in parallel with the main program, in the American corner (Radićeva 7) from 12:00 to 2:00 p.m., the "Young corner" program will also be held. Two literary promotions for younger readers will be held every day.
"Young Corner" draws attention to the younger generation audience in recognizing their reading needs, contemporary literary voices that children and young people recognize as authentic and contemporary. Promotions and discussions within "Young Corner" are dedicated to the issue of the status of literature for children and young people in BiH and globally today, and the processes of the emergence of various genres within this literature.
We believe that the "Youth Corner" will also help the Bookstan festival management in its future work, not only to attract a larger number of visitors from the younger generation, but also to revalue and focus attention on the importance of literature for children and young people, on contemporary narratives that shape new generations.
During the eighth Bookstan, Buybook will present its new, special edition for children and young people for the first time. Some of the titles that will be presented in the "Young Corner" are: The Wonderful World (Vesna Mišanović), It Can Be Different (Aslı Tohumcu), A Fairy Tale Within a Fairy Tale ( Ahmet Ümit) and Neverland (Ahmet Ümit).
"Bookstan District" at the American Corner Brčko
"Bookstan District" was launched with the upcoming eighth edition of the festival, which will be held simultaneously in Sarajevo and Brčko, thus Bookstan directly expands the area of its festival platform to multiple locations in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
"Bookstan District" is a two-day program that will be held during the week of the festival, from 2 to 4 p.m. at the American Corner Brčko (Bulevar mira bb). "Bookstan District" includes two literary promotions within Bookstan's "Young Corner", i.e. in the field of literature for children and young adults, and two promotions of books by the festival's guests of honor from Bookstan's main program.
A detailed schedule of literary promotions of the "Bookstan District" program will be published later.
"Breakfast with the author" in Atelier Figure
Two dates of the main program of the eighth Bookstan festival are reserved for the guest program "Breakfast with the Author" of the "Istria Book Fair". With this program, we mark the beginning of regional cooperation with our fellow organizers of this Pula festival with a decades-long tradition.
"Book Fair in Istria" was born in 1995 from the bold gesture of one man to call a small book exhibition "at the end of the world" the 1st Book Fair in Istria just after the end of the war. In its foundations is the spirit of the sixties and seventies, the memory of the growth of a new city, urban and creative, marked by the creative power of the people of Pula at that time, their courage to change the world from the geographical margins. Interculturality, affirmation of internal and European regionalism, maintenance and promotion of the uniqueness of literary culture are at the core of the program of the Fair.
"Breakfast with the Author" will be held as part of the eighth Bookstan at Atelje Figure (Danijela Ozme 12). Conversations with authors will be moderated by Aljoša Pužar, and a detailed schedule of literary promotions will be announced later.