Emir Imamović Pirke (Tuzla, 1973.)
journalist and writer
It is too late, it is always too late... When I found out that writing is my job, I had already been paying electricity and water bills by turning letters into words, and words into sentences. And dang it, nothing has ever gone the way I had planned it. There was no contemplative gaze into the distance, or a wooden pencil whose end I am chewing before I write something in my Moleskine notebook for which I will become famous. For example, that all families are unfortunate in their own way, or that the most important question is to be or not to be... It was, as I said, already late to think of a writer pose, to eat pencils, and stare through the window, into something, there in the distance – because what fool does usually stare into something nearby? – and as for the Moleskine notebook, I have lost it once while moving, after it had become clear that every plan of mine exists in order not to become true. Consequently I am writing because I am not capable of doing any other job. It is true that I could learn to do it, just... If I were an electrician it wouldn’t make any sense to repeat that I’ve heard of inspiration, but I have never seen it. It’s not that I miss it or something. I don’t have time to hang out – I have a deadline.
Kruno Lokotar (Daruvar, 1967.)
literary editor
Kruno Lokotar was born in 1967 between the signs of Cancer and Lion, so he feels like a lion running – backwards. Before learning the letters he had learned the numbers, but he hasn’t drawn any conclusions out of it. After all, it is very likely that we need letters to make conclusions. Reading used to be his hobby, then he studied literature among other things, and finally became editor. He has edited more than 300 books, out of which 200 belong to local authors. He is nowadays looking for a hobby. He doesn’t know how to sing or play instruments, and that’s what he would like to do, so he has become one of the frequent guests and organizers of various literary or similar festivals. For example: First Prozac on the Tip of the Tongue (Prvi prozak na vrh jezika), Fališ, KaLibar bestival, Spikigin... He likes to award people, to share, but since he is tight with money he has established a few literary awards for writers to gain reputation and what comes along with it. Those awards are called Prozac, On the Tip of the Tongue and Post Scriptum. In short: P.S. Prozac on the Tip of the Tongue.
Aljoša Pužar (Rijeka, 1974.)
culturologist, writer and social critic
From the moment my beloved grannies left this world, I was not the smartest, the prettiest, the funniest any more, nor the most profound creature that walked the Earth. That left a huge space of doubts, egotistic misery and hasted self-reinventions. I tried to do the latter in several countries. Airports, that used to scare me crazy, turned into my sweet almost-homes. The result is soft-boiled. But, what works perfectly for my breakfast eggs is yet to be proved useful for my life. I am a professor, but no miraculous inventions implied; I have titles, but they are not noble; I write books too, but not the popular ones (except among grandmothers); I like to cook, but failing in diets; I sing like a nightingale (with laryngitis); I fall in love passionately, yet I am too heavy to climb any balconies. I need help. Especially with semi-colons.
Tanja Tarbuk (Zagreb, 1961.)
translator
Literary translations of Portuguese authors are my vocation, not just my profession. I have been systematically doing this impossible task – translation – to bring the audience closer to the culture of one interesting, slightly forgotten nation, set close between Europe and the Atlantic; the face which Europe is showing to the ocean, as once Pessoa, their greatest contemporary poet, said. I discovered Portugal back in 1984 during a school trip, in the times when real fado taverns still existed. Since then, I have been studying their language and literature with a lusophilic enthusiasm; I have studied there, fallen in love, enjoyed in good company and wine, and I repeatedly return to that country which builds its philosophy on eternal longing.
