ELIZABETA SHELEVA

Elizabeta Sheleva was born in Ohrid (1961).
She is a professor at the Department of General and Comparative Literature, at the Faculty of Philology ‘Blazhe Koneski’ in Skopje.
She is the Chairperson of the Independent Writers’ Association of Macedonia and an Editor of the literary Magazine ‘Nashe pismo’. She is a member of the Macedonian PEN Center. She has been a longtime editor of the regional literary and cultural magazine ‘Sarajevske sveske’, published in Sarajevo (B&H). Sheleva was the director of the Summer School ‘Macedonian Cultural Identity’, within the ‘St. Clement's Summer University’, held in Ohrid, 2011. She taught at the course ‘The Balkan Subject and Its Genders’, within the Ohrid Summer University for post-graduate students, held in Ohrid, 2001. She was the manager of the scientific and research project ‘Doubled Otherness – Balkanism Gender Aspects’, within the Foundation ‘Insitute Open Society’ – Macedonia, 2004. Sheleva was a visiting professor at the post-graduate studies school ‘Feminism in Transnational Perspective’, within the Interuniversity center in Dubrovnik, Croatia, during the academic years 2007 and 2008.
She participated at the round table with Gayatri Spivak ‘Postocolonial Discourse and the Balkans’, held in Skopje, on July 8, 2003. She was the manager of the symposium ‘Without Persecution, Who Am I’, within the Struga Poetry Evenings, dedicated to the Laurate Mahmud Darwish (2007). She was the Macedonian participant in the international project ‘The Image of the Other in the Literary Education in Souteastern Europe’, 2001, Sofia (Bulgaria).
Sheleva wrote articles for the daily newspaper ‘Dnevnik’ in the course of 2000.
She has edited: The Anthology of Macedonian Contemporary Poetry ‘Poem Between Two Summers’ for the Struga Poetry Evenings, 2009, and the pages dedicated to ‘The Macedonian Poetry in Transition’ for the special issue of ‘Sarajevske sveske’, 2007. She was the Macedonian member in the International Board for the ‘Balkanika’Award in 2007, 2009, and 2011.
Sheleva is the author of the Foreword to the Selected Poems by Wally Mongane Serote, Golden Wreath Laurate of Struga Poetry Evenings for 2012.
She is the author of critical texts for the Painting Catalogues of: Miroslav Masin, Slobodan Zhivkovski, Stojan Gjuric, Dragan Mijach, Marijeta Sidovski, Simonida Filipovska, and Emil Shulajkovski.
Sheleva translates from English, Serbian, Slovenian. She has translated, from English, the theoretical books ‘Gender Issues’ (1998, together with R. Alagjozovski) by Judith Butler, and ‘Unended Quest – Intellectual Autobiography’ (2001) by Karl Popper, as well as the poetry book ‘Honey Lasso’ (2012) by Ronit Bergman. She has translated ‘Theory for the Present Time’ by Rastko Mochnik, from Slovenian (together with J. Koteska). Sheleva has published about 200 contributions and 8 books.
‘Comparative Poetics’ (1996),
‘Literary and Theoretical Studies’ (1997),
‘Culturological Essays’ (2000),
‘From Dialogism to Intetextuality’ (2000),
‘Prisoner of the Everyday’ (2001, articles), ‘Open Letter’ (2003),
‘Home/Identity’ (2005), ‘Home of the Letter’ (2008), “Heterotopies of Writing” (2014).
She received the ‘Mlad Borec’ award for debut book in 1986 and the award for a longterm contribution to the essay-writing, by the magazine ‘Koreni’, Kumanovo, in 2007.

ERMIS LAFAZANOVSKI

Novelist, short-stories writer, literary essays, and anthropology studies writer. So far, he has published six novels: An Aristocrat (1997), Portrayer (2001), The Novel about Weapons (2003), Hrapesko (2006), Sunday (2009), History of People Frightened to Death (2012). In 2001 he received the ‘Stale Popov’ Award of the Macedonian Writers’ Association for the novel Portrayer, and in 2003 he received Prose Masters for the novel The Novel About Weapons. His novel Hrapesko was nominated in 2006 as the Macedonian contribution for the Balkanika Award. He has published three collections of stories: Half of the Rainbow (1992), When Umbrellas Were Invented in Skopje (1999) and Exotic Cantata (2008), as well as the scientific studies: Tradition, Naration, Literature (1996), Text and Mentality (2000), Macedonian Cosmogonic Legends (2001), Anthropologic Dialogues (2002),
Itar Pejo (2003), and Myths for the Creation of the World (2007). He is a member of the Writers’ Association of Macedonia. He is president of the Macedonian PEN Center