Luiza-Katica Bouharaoua born in Croatia in 1985, is a writer, translator and cultural operator. She received the CEI Award for Young Writers 2022 on the occasion of the literary event held at the CEI Headquarters on 6 September, in the framework of the Vilenica International Literary Festival.
The award was presented by CEI Deputy Secretary General, Nina Kodelja, who highlighted that this award, launched in 2021 in cooperation with the Slovene Writers’ Association, aimed at promoting the translation and circulation of literary works of young, outstanding writers from the region.
“The translation offers the possibility to connect people from different cultures speaking different languages. This could contribute to enhancing dialogue, mutual understanding, good neighbourly relations which are more and more necessary nowadays” Kodelja said.
The jury committee highlighted that
“Luiza-Katica Bouharaoua is a contemporary artist in every sense of the word. She has interwoven her artistic work with social activity - as an activist, feminist, organizer, cultural worker, and producer”.
As the founder and coordinator of the non-governmental organization Skribonauti, Luiza-Katica Bouharaoua designs and leads literary and artistic programs for male and female prisoners in Croatia, and one of the results of the project is the short-prose collection Nastavi priču (Continue the story), which received the SozialMarie 2021 social innovation award. Book of short stories Jesmo li to bili mi (Was this us), for which she received several awards, is a post-Yugoslav, post-war prose of the generation of the 1980s, which discovers its existence, fluid identity, relationships, and values in a highly precarious society of exploitative capitalism and mindless consumerism. Her writing is poetic, psychologically deep, yet direct and real”.
For information: fabro@cei.int
