Following an open call to participate in the 2021/2022 residency programme, three candidates from Croatia have been selected by a jury consisting of Maja Klarić, Marko Pogačar and Ivan Sršen. Candidates from the partners’ countries were selected to visit Mljet for two-week-long residencies in 2021/2022. The following candidates from Croatia will each do one residency in a partner country in 2021/2022:

Marija Andrijašević (1984, Split) is a poet and writer. In 2015 she received an MA in Comparative Literature and in Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology from the Faculty of humanities and social sciences in Zagreb. Her manuscript Davide, svašta su mi radili won the prize “Goran for Young Poets” in 2007. Both before and after receiving this award, she has published poetry in cultural and literary magazines (Re, Quorum, Knjigomat, Poezija…). Her poetry is included in multiple contemporary anthologies (I u nebo i u niks, Hrvatska mlada lirika…), as well as the Italian anthology of selected poetry from the Balkans, Voci di donne della ex Jugoslavia. She has occasionally translated poetry from English for the Croatian Radio (HR3), and has interviewed female writers from the Balkans for Voxfeminae.net. Her poetry has been translated into Slovenian, Italian, Ukrainian, English, Swedish, Polish, Romanian and German. She has attended and completed the two-semester-long program held by the Centre for Women’s Studies in Zagreb. In 2018 she received the yearly scholarship from the Ministry of Culture for her first novel, Zemlja bez sutona, which will be published in 2021.

photo © Nikola Radovani

Katja Grcić (1982, Split) received an MA in English and German Language and Literature at the University of Zadar. Within the Tempus project, she was awarded a scholarship at the Centre for Translation Studies in Vienna. At the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb, she received an MA in Dramaturgy. She writes poetry, prose, drama texts, essays, reviews and scientific papers. Her early poetry collection Nosive konstrukcije was published by Meandarmedia in 2015, followed by a bilingual edition of poetry and short prose Ljeto / Summer in 2017, and an experimental prose text Pisma Ziti in 2020. Her poetry was published in various magazines in Croatia (Quorum, Tema, Zarez, Poezija, Mogućnosti, Vijenac, etc.), as well as in some international ones like Pobocza (Poland) and Signaturen (Germany). Some of her poetry and dramas were broadcast on the Croatian Radio (HR3) in the shows Poezija naglas, Riječi i riječi, Metafora, Radio igra. Her drama texts Molekule (2017), Smrtopis / Prekinuta veza (2018), Strah tijela od poda (2019) are available at drame.hr. In 2017 her prose was shortlisted for Sedmica Prize, an award announced by the Croatian literary portal Kritična masa. With Molekule, she made the shortlist of drame.hr's adaptation-to-screenplay prize in 2018. In 2020 she won the Marin Držić Prize (3rd place) for Strah tijela od poda. Her drama monologue Proljeće naše zlovolje premiered within the Monovid -19 project at the ZKM theatre in Zagreb in July 2020 (dir. Anica Tomić). She is a member of HDP and SPID.

Josip Ivanović (1989., Zagreb) received an MA in Comparative Literature and Portuguese Language and Literature from the Faculty of humanities and social sciences in Zagreb. He’s been working as a freelance editor and translator since 2012, and in 2017 he started working as the editor-in-chief at the publishing house Edicije Božičević in Zagreb. Since 2014 he’s been working as a Teaching Assistant alongside prof. dr. sc. Neil Mathur at Walden University in Washington state, USA, as well as at Langara College in Vancouver, Canada. In 2018 he was given an accolade by the Ukrainian Council of Culture for his contribution to Ukrainian culture in the Republic of Croatia. He is a member of the Croatian Literary Translators Association. In 2019 and 2020 he attended the Portuguese Translab. He occasionally writes articles for Rizom.rs. In collaboration with the Croatian PEN and the Croatian Hispanic Society, he has organized multiple panels about Latin American literature.

The Ulysses’ Shelter project was started in 2017 with the objective to build a network of exchange literary residencies aimed at young writers and literary translators. The second stage of Ulysses’ Shelter is once again being co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, and coordinated by Croatian publishing house and literary agency Sandorf, along with four partners, Literature Across Frontiers and Wales Literature Exchange in Wales, Krokodil in Serbia, Thraka in Greece and Slovene Writers’ Association in Slovenia.

The candidates chosen by the partner organisations are:

Thraka, Larissa: Iakovos Anyfantakis, Filia Kanellopoulou, Nikolas Koutsodontis

Slovene Writers' Association, Ljubljana: Tomo Podstenšek, Uroš Prah, Ana Svetel

Krokodil, Beograd: Goran Stamenić, Katarina Mitrović, Vitomirka Trebovac

Literature Across Frontiers, Wales: Dylan Moore, Morgan Owen