site.btaSerbian Writer Ljubenovic Wins Aleko International Short Story Competition

Serbian writer Bojan Ljubenovic is 2025’s laureate of the international humorous short story competition "Aleko", which is organized annually by the municipality of Svishtov on the eve of Aleko Days, dedicated to the 162nd anniversary of the birth of Bulgarian humourist Aleko Konstantinov. BTA learned this Monday from Tanya Likova of the International Aleko Konstantinov Foundation. 

Bojan Ljubenovic was awarded for his short story Origin. The jury, chaired by Assoc. Prof. Yordan Eftimov and members Mikhail Veshim, editor-in-chief of the newspaper "Shtarshel" [Hornet], Rumen Belchev, manager of the newspaper, Tanya Likova and Vrabka Popova, representatives of the municipality of Svishtov and the International Foundation "Aleko Konstantinov", selected the story of Ljubenovic among a total of 83 works by 52 writers.

Written work was received from Romania, Poland, Serbia, North Macedonia, Russia, Ukraine, Hungary, Slovakia, Moldova, Italy, France, the USA, the UK, the Netherlands, Brazil and Albania, Likova said. She specified that the results will be announced on January 13 in the Bulgarian folk community centre "Elenka and Kiril D. Avramovi - 1856" in Svishtov, and at the end of January the competition for the next year will be announced.

Bojan Ljubenovic was born in 1972 in Belgrade, Serbia. He is a lawyer by education and a journalist and writer by profession. He is better known as a satirist and has collaborated with various publications. He has published about thirty books for children and adults, including ten books of aphorisms. He is the author of five plays and a television show. Ljubenovic has won almost all prestigious awards in the field of satire in his homeland and in the Balkans.

The winner in 2024 was the writer Tosho Donchev from Hungary.