Faced with the revolutionary transformation of the media that our society is going through the event aims at tackling the question which direction the discourse on education will take. What do we need to know? What should be taught at universities and schools? What should be built upon and what can be dispensed with? What is the point of humanistic education today? Should we start learning and teaching how to program and handle artificial intelligence? Some of these issues and related concerns will be addressed by the panel consisting of the writer Tonio Schachinger, Professor of Didactics for German as a Foreign Language, Dr. Andreja Retelj, grammar school teacher Michael Steber and author and composer Dr. Nina Dragičević. The evening will be hosted by Bernhard Winkler.

About the authors 
Born in New Delhi in 1992, Tonio Schachinger studied German Language and Literature at the University of Vienna and Creative Writing at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. His debut novel, Nicht wie ihr, won the City of Bremen Young Authors Award and was shortlisted for the 2019 German Book Prize. His second novel, Echtzeitalter, won the German Book Prize in 2023. Tonio Schachinger lives in Vienna.
Dr. Nina Dragičević (1984) is a poet, essayist and sound artist. She has authored the books Kdo ima druge skrbi (Škuc, 2014), Slavne neznane (Škuc, 2016), Med njima je glasba (Parada ponosa, 2017), Ljubav reče greva (Škuc, 2019), To telo, pokončno (Škuc, 2021), Kako zveni oblast (Založba /*cf, 2022), Ampak, kdo? (Škuc, 2023) and Auditory Poverty and Its Discontents (Errant Bodies Press, 2024). Dragičević is the recipient of the 2023 Werner Düttmann Fellowship (Akademie der Künste, Berlin), the 2023 Dr Ana Mayer Kansky Award, the 2021 Jenko Award, the 2020 Župančič Award, two 2018 Knight of Poetry Awards, and was a 2018 Palma Ars Acustica finalist. 

Co-organizers: DAAD, Goethe-Institut Ljubljana, Austrian Cultural Forum, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana and CD

In the first session of a new Literary Dialogues series, presented by The Embassy of Spain and Cankarjev Dom, the authors from both countries will discuss important literary and current topics.

We will host representatives of contemporary literature, the Slovenian writer Goran Vojnović and the Spanish writer Teresa Cardona. The dialogue will be moderated by journalist Mimi Podkrižnik.

With these events we aim to bring together authors, critics, editors, journalists, literary agents, students and the general public in order to exchange ideas and experiences on each of the topics raised in each dialogue, generating debate on innovative proposals. Ultimately, we aspire to bring our countries even closer, to know each other better through our literatures and our thinkers.
 

The European Union Prize for Literature (EUPL), an annual initiative to recognise the best emerging fiction writers in Europe, aims at highlighting the rich fabric of European literary talent and the various stories deriving from its many cultures. The award not only celebrates creativity and the power of storytelling, but is also an important catalyst for the authors' international promotion. The round table discussion participants include Czech writer Lucie Faulerová, Fabula featured author and winner of the EU Prize for Literature, and several Slovenian authors, previous EUPL winners (Gabriela Babnik, Jasmin B. Frelih, Anja Mugerli…). 

The EU Prize for Literature: A Recipe for International Success? round-table will be hosted by Dražen Dragičević. Discussion topics: How has EUPL influenced the authors’ careers? What are the challenges in overcoming linguistic and cultural barriers? What are the writers’ views on the evolving European literary landscape?

The European Union Prize for Literature, supported by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, is an annual initiative recognising the finest up-and-coming fiction writers in Europe, highlighting diversity in the European Union and its associated countries. The Prize aims to put the spotlight on the creativity and diverse wealth of Europe’s contemporary literature in the field of fiction, to promote the circulation of literature within Europe and to encourage greater interest in non-national literary works. The works of the selected winners are promoted in the hope of reaching a wider and international audience, and to address readers beyond national and linguistic borders. The Prize is financed by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, which aims to achieve three main goals: promote cross-border mobility of those working in the cultural sector, encourage the transnational circulation of cultural and artistic output and foster intercultural dialogue.

The literary evening commemorating the Slovenian Cultural Holiday is dedicated to new members of the Slovenian Writers' Association, Irena Androjna, Barbara Gregorič Gorenc, Mirt Komel, Darinka Kozinc and Tom Veber, who will read excerpts from their work. 

The evening's host is poet Meta Kušar, musical accompaniment by Matej Krajnc. 
 

Urša Marinšek: Retirement Home Stories in Slovenian Literature
When it comes to the notion of cultural aging (and not biological) at least two major cultural narratives of aging exist: the decline narrative and the age-defying narratives. The decline narrative coincides with many of the aging stereotypes (e.g., frailty, vulnerability, disability, immobility, dependency, and dementia). The age-defying narratives include the idea of active aging, striving to slow down aging and preventing a person to decline. As studies into aging by scholars and literary gerontologists have shown, these cultural narratives can be found in many literary works. The aim of this contribution is to outline literary representations of age and aging in contemporary Slovene literature. Many works offer insight into these representations; we will take a look at the novels Home Home (Dom dom, 2008) by Tone Partljič, Chronicle of Forgetting (Kronika pozabljanja, 2014) by Sebastijan Pregelj, a collection of short stories Coffee Circle (Kavni krog, 2021) by Barbara Hanuš, and others. Various books, various genres, offering many perspectives on old age and aging. The books describe older people in various ways, discuss their worth, and present stereotypical/prevalent cultural narratives of older people. 

About the lecturer:
Urša Marinšek studied English Language and Literature and Sociology at the Faculty of Arts, the University of Maribor. She is currently employed at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Aging and Care, at the University of Graz in Austria. She has been collaborating in many international and interdisciplinary research projects connected to aging, digitalization, and digital learning. In her research, she focuses on representations of old age, ageing, and care in Slovenian, North-American, and British literature.

Dr. Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl:
Politicising Forgetfulness:
Representations of Dementia in Recent South Slavic Fiction 
In South Slavic literatures, considerable attention is currently being paid to suppressed and competing memories of war and political violence. An increasing focus on older protagonists, notably on people with dementia, is conspicuous in this context. As Krüger-Fürhoff et al (2021) have demonstrated, in fiction, dementia is not merely addressed in terms of an ahistorical illness, but used to represent traumatic historical events which prove difficult to remember. Literary representations of the disease are thus highly politicised: Dementia is treated not so much as an individual experience, but as a society’s forgetfulness about its past. Using examples from recent Croatian, Bosnian and Bulgarian fiction (Jergović, Mlakić, Gospodinov), I will analyse, in this paper, in what ways literary narratives of memory loss tie in with and feed into debates about memory politics in the Southeast European context.

About the lecturer:
Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Slavic Studies at the University of Graz, Austria. She specialises in literary and cultural studies with a focus on twentieth- and twenty-first-century Russian as well as post-Yugoslav fiction, émigré literature, and age/ageing studies. In her PhD thesis, she analysed representations of women’s ageing in Russian fiction. She is the editor of the volume Aging in Slavic Literatures: Essays in Literary Gerontology (Bielefeld, 2017). Among her recent publications is the multi-disciplinary essay collection Foreign Countries of Old Age: East and Southeast European Perspectives on Aging (Bielefeld, 2021), co-edited with Oana Hergenröther. She also is a member of the project team of the research project “Transforming Anxieties of Ageing in Southeastern Europe: Political, Social, and Cultural Narratives of Demographic Change,” funded by the Volkswagen Foundation (2023–2027).

Dr. Marlena Plavšić: Wisdom and Well-being in Old Age
For a long time wisdom hasn’t drawn much attention of researchers in psychology. However, in the last thirty years that has changed, as more scientific papers have been published on the topic of wisdom. Perhaps we started to search more for something that can help us cope with a dynamic everyday life. We are overwhelmed with a huge amount of information and a growing number of decisions that we make ever so fast in a shorter amount of time. On the other hand, we may be trying to comprehend what wisdom might entail in today's context. Very likely both reasons are plausible. Traditionally, wisdom has been associated with the acquisition of life experience, so greater wisdom has been attributed to older people, as they have cumulated the most experience. The presentation will discuss how wisdom is defined in psychology, how it could be measured, what happens to wisdom in old age and how wisdom can be connected to health. We will also talk about contributions to the development of wisdom and what wisdom can contribute to, regardless of how old we are.

About the lecturer:
Marlena Plavšić obtained her M. A. and Ph. D. degrees in psychology at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Zagreb, and her M. Sc. degree in anthropology from the Faculty of Science of the same university. A vital part of her work experience comprised psychosocial work in the grassroots organisation Suncokret. She now teaches courses in psychology at the humanities, music and health studies at the Juraj Dobrila University in Pula, Croatia. In her scientific and professional work, she is mainly involved with topics of education and human rights.

Dr. Otto Gerdina: Compassionate or Hostile Ageism
The Different Faces of Ageism: Between Marginalization and the Privilege of Old Age
The lecture addresses the phenomenon of ageism, which tends to manifest itself as either compassionate or hostile. The first part of the paper explores how health and social services for the elderly have reinforced negative stereotypes about old age in the past. The second part focuses on how over the past fifty years these policies have begun to be seen as an unjustified privilege of the older generation.

About the lecturer:
Dr. Otto Gerdina, Teaching Assistant, is a researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences and director of the OPRO Institute. As an associate of the Public Opinion and Mass Communication Research Centre, he conducts research into media representations of old age in Slovenian newspapers, as well as public opinion related to old age, aging and the elderly.
Dr. Gerdina's accolades include the University of Ljubljana Special Commendation for Best Academic Results (2016), the University of Ljubljana Prešeren 

The fourth guest featured in the Alma's Evenings series is Evald Flisar (1945), author of several travel novels and fiction books with travel motifs, including his best-known and most widely read Čarovnikov vajenec (1986). Also notable are his travel novels Tisoč in ena pot (1979), Južno od severa (1981) and Popotnik v kraljestvu senc and the book Zgodbe s poti (2000). Flisar has written a series of plays that are performed all over the world, and received several Grum Awards and other distinctions, as well as eleven Kresnik Award nominations. The most translated Slovenian writer, Evald Flisar is a globetrotter who has visited close to a hundred countries around the world, and lived for a number of years in London and Australia.

The talks are hosted by Dr. Andrej Blatnik.

Alma's Evenings:
The Alma's Evenings series is dedicated to talks with writers-cum-travellers about their work and the books they love, about their favourite paths and those they still wish to tread, as well as about the music and gastronomy typical of their favourite places.
The literature that the series focuses on is literature that initiates change. Changing the readers, changing the readers’ understanding of the world, changing the world. More >>


The event will be held in Slovenian.

The fifth writer featured in the Alma's Evenings series is Carlos Pascual (1964). After leaving his native Mexico and living in several countries, Carlos made a home for himself in Slovenia. The books he has published here include the literary reflections on Slovenia, Debeli zidovi, majhna okna (Cankarjeva založba 2017) and Nezakonita melanholija (LUD Šerpa, 2020), which received the 2021 Novo mesto Award. Pascual's books often address the cultural differences between the author's homeland and his adopted country over the past decade.

The talks are hosted by Dr. Andrej Blatnik.

Alma's Evenings:
The Alma's Evenings series is dedicated to talks with writers-cum-travellers about their work and the books they love, about their favourite paths and those they still wish to tread, as well as about the music and gastronomy typical of their favourite places.
The literature that the series focuses on is one that initiates change. Changing the readers, changing the readers’ understanding of the world, changing the world. More >>

The event will be held in English with translation into Slovenian.

Alma's Evenings’ second guest is Samo Rugelj (1966). Publisher, founder and editor-in-chief of the Bukla magazine with a PhD in publishing, Rugelj has authored several popular journalism and fiction books, most notably a travel novel Samo močni preživijo (UMco 2023). He has also published several mountain climbing and running travel books, including Triglavske poti (2012) and Delaj, teci, živi (2018). Rugelj's travel book about his adventures on Crete, Soncu naproti (UMco 2022), won the 2022 Krilata Želva (Winged Turtle) Award. 

The talks are hosted by Dr. Andrej Blatnik.


Alma's Evenings:
The Alma's Evenings series is dedicated to talks with writers-cum-travellers about their work and the books they love, about their favourite paths and those they still wish to tread, as well as about the music and gastronomy typical of their favourite places.
The literature that the series focuses on is literature that initiates change. Changing the readers, changing the readers’ understanding of the world, changing the world. More >>
 

The event will be held in Slovenian.