PROSEFEST, the first international festival of prose writing in Serbia, has been established with the intention of bringing literature back to its roots; to put it more accurately – the live and direct contact of authors with their reading audiences. That is the reason why eminent foreign and Serbian writers will read their texts in public auditoriums, talk to the audience, and also visit the institutions where literature is studied as a part of curriculum (comprehensive schools, art schools and academies) and have discussions with the students about the topics they choose together. So, a kind of the spirit of antic Agora, or what nowadays we refer(red) to as workshops, was also one of the guiding ideas for PROSEFEST, designed to underscore the fact that at the turn of the new century high literature cannot stay something distant and academically cold, on the contrary – it must and can become an integral part of the everyday life culture.

Similar but not identical festivals have existed for years now in many cities of the Central Europe, and Novi Sad has been chosen to be the home of our PROSEFEST because it has been an important centre of Central European and Serbian culture for three centuries. On the other hand, what was known before as Tribina Mladih (Youth Panel), now the Cultural Centre of Novi Sad, is a worthy bearer and organizer of the whole project, as it is an institution which has always supported modern and innovative cultural actions. Novi Sad has been honing its tradition of different artistic events of the domestic and international level, and the City Assembly as the patron of this prose festival has once again shown it is open for keeping and continuing such a tradition.

PROSEFEST’s special freshness comes from its young associates, students who will moderate public discussions with the writers, vouching for good communication because they are not burdened by professional literary engagements, and at the same time they represent a new sensibility which will certainly be predominant in the decades ahead of us. Trusting that in these decades one of them might become the editor or participant of PROSEFEST, we believe in the bright future of our Festival.

April, 2007

Sava Damjanov, Editor-in-Chief of the first international PROSEFEST in Novi Sad