Women* Write the Balkans
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Women* Write the Balkans
@womenwritebalkans.bsky.social
810 followers 11 following 44 posts
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We're immensely proud to share with you "Airborne," a new story by @enaselimo.bsky.social:
www.womenwritethebalkans.com/essays/airbo...
"According to Bosnian documents, he is a traitor. According to Turkish documents, he is a spy. According to American documents, he is an alien. According to them all, he is to be put in no position to help others or himself." Ena Selimović: Airborne Illustration: gray and black embroidery of B-2 bomber patent drawings on a blue background
October 2, 2025 at 2:21 PM
womenwritebalkans.bsky.social
We’re looking for nonfiction—of any length or form—that dives into the many meanings and manifestations of embodiment in and of the Balkans.

Send us your pitches (50–100 words) by October 1 and join us for our first-ever Virtual Open House on September 24:

www.womenwritethebalkans.com/specials
Call for Pitches: Bodies of the Balkans
August 11, 2025 at 1:45 PM
womenwritebalkans.bsky.social
www.womenwritethebalkans.com/essays/pilgr...
Women* Write the Balkans Community Some stories stay with you forever. For our author Dijana Mujkanović, “Pilgrimage to Ilije Bursaća 51” is one she carries everywhere. Photo of a forearm tattoo featuring a colorful bird, a window, and a plant
August 10, 2025 at 4:00 PM
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“Yugoslavia, California, Ethiopia, and water activism populate Mela Žuljević’s deeply researched personal narrative, “Hercegovina Kalifornija: Landscape and Legacies in the Neretva Valley.” The essay transported me to a place I’d often been but will never again be in the same way, having read this essay. It succinctly renders the utter folly of geopolitical borders, especially when they cut through water. Žuljević describes a grim reality—“Political divisions of the country produced such ethnic landscapes that now benefit only the alliances of ethnonationalist ruling classes and investors who, under the guise of ‘green transition,’ capture water for private profit”—that nonetheless can, and has, and should be resisted, in solidarity with the Neretva.” Ena Selimović, author of "Counting Change"
August 7, 2025 at 2:14 PM
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Women* Write the Balkans Community "From the initial essay, Ena Selimović's extraordinary story “Counting Change,” Women* Write the Balkans made a place magnificently new and curious while speaking closely to what I have experienced. When I got the chance to contribute, the editors read with so much care and imagination - each version brought rounds of pleasure, challenges and trust, fully appropriate for the story of Hercegovina Kalifornija." Mela Žuljević, author of "Hercegovina Kalifornija"
August 5, 2025 at 3:29 PM
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"Now, nearly two decades later, the change is undeniable. The village is shrinking, its pulse weaker than ever before. The nature that we once tamed and bent to our will is reclaiming its space. Trees grow in places once unheard of, wild grasses swallow up abandoned fields, and lively chatter once carried across the meadows is now replaced by silence. I feel an overwhelming certainty that nothing as groundbreaking as the arrival of the Bulgarians will ever happen again." Olivera Lazarević: When the Fields Spoke Bulgarian
May 12, 2025 at 8:12 AM
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“Year after year, every spring, an expected transformation would take place in Trnavci, my village in central Serbia. With the change of the season, the first buds of new life would emerge from the soil, and alongside them arrived the Bulgarian seasonal workers who nurtured the land and harvested the crops. In the autumn, they would leave, but only to come back the next year. Then, one year, they simply didn’t come. And they never returned.” Olivera Lazarević: When the Fields Spoke Bulgarian
May 8, 2025 at 9:45 AM
womenwritebalkans.bsky.social
We conclude our seasonal shorts series Balkan Blooms in the fields of central Serbia, where Olivera Lazarević remembers the legacy of Bulgarian seasonal labor.
www.womenwritethebalkans.com/essays/when-...
"For the first nineteen years of my life, before I moved to Belgrade for my studies, I watched my parents work our family’s land. Their labor was not merely a means of income but an obligation. My father, a geography teacher, and my mother, a retired teller, did not rely on agriculture to survive. They cultivated the land out of duty. Selling it would be a sign of failure, renting it out would be an act of laziness, neglecting it a betrayal." Olivera Lazarević: When the Fields Spoke Bulgarian
May 5, 2025 at 5:22 AM
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"My aunt hates crowds, but my favorite time for asparagus foraging is Easter. Everyone comes out between Easter lunch and dinner to avoid the post-food coma nap. Rural northeast Istria, usually empty, now crawls with people. We say hello, and I feel like part of the community." Rebecca Duras: A Few Things I Know About Asparagus (and A Few More That I Don't)
April 19, 2025 at 10:13 AM
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www.womenwritethebalkans.com/essays/a-few...
"Picking asparagus is all about timing. Leave it too late and the snakes are out. Leave it to the weekend, and the groves are picked over, my aunt grumbling about out-of-towners, city slickers, and farmer’s market resellers who take it all before the working people get their shot. Most foraging in Istria winds up in a land dispute." Rebecca Duras: A Few Things I Know About Asparagus (and A Few More That I Don't)
April 16, 2025 at 11:50 AM
womenwritebalkans.bsky.social
Not all Balkan blooms are soft and fragrant—some are green, spiky, and delicious. This week, Rebecca Duras takes us to Istria for a hands-on introduction to the art of wild asparagus picking and shows us what to do with it once we’re back in the kitchen.🌱
www.womenwritethebalkans.com/essays/a-few...
" I don’t know much about asparagus, just as I don’t know much about about mushroom foraging, butchering a pig, or driving away curses. I can’t know because my grandmother won’t teach me. She says I have what I learn in books and that is better because she only finished four years of school and this is a hard life and who would want the skills for a hard life. But I want to know." Rebecca Duras: A Few Things I Know About Asparagus (and A Few More That I Don't)
April 15, 2025 at 1:15 PM
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" I start with lots of ingredients and no plan. I end up with a stack of cake layers and cream. Some parts are broken and uneven. The cream is melting. I throw on as many strawberries as it will take, hoping to hide the rough parts. In the end, I am pleased with my efforts. The cake is an overflow of strawberries. I have to remove shelves to fit it in the fridge. It looks like a fabulously overdressed woman heading to a ball. I want my daughter to have loads of strawberries." Madeleine Corcoran: Mothers Who Eat the Good Strawberries
April 11, 2025 at 9:25 AM
womenwritebalkans.bsky.social
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"As I spoke to Bulgarian mothers and mothers of many other nationalities, a certain logic about the strawberries emerged. The ones who said they would eat the bad fruit and save the good for their child did it on the principle of “putting my child first.” And yet, I felt like I, too, put my children first. I just didn’t put myself last." Madeleine Corcoran: Mothers Who Eat the Good Strawberries
April 9, 2025 at 12:52 PM
womenwritebalkans.bsky.social
Spring is late and somewhat treacherous this year, but our first essay in the Balkan Blooms series is here, brought to you by Madeleine Corcoran.
www.womenwritethebalkans.com/essays/mothe...
“The birch tree, the washing lines, and the way the pavements crackled with meltwater from the rooftops one day and froze over the next. This seemed to illustrate, the more I observed, that birth was not one event but a painful series of coming in and out of life.” Madeleine Corcoran: Mothers Who Eat the Good Strawberries
April 8, 2025 at 8:31 AM
womenwritebalkans.bsky.social
As spring approaches, we return to @rkrystalli.bsky.social luminous piece "Light Needs," which reflects on "caring for budding life" and being attuned to the many ways of sustaining it.
www.womenwritethebalkans.com/essays/light...
"Being read closely—and being edited carefully and generously—is an enormous treat. I felt like my words were treated with care, not only for the writer, but also for the readers who will encounter them. Having those words sit side-by-side with those of women writers from the region I hold dear only sweetened the experience." Roxani Krystalli, the author of "Light Needs"
March 31, 2025 at 10:32 AM
womenwritebalkans.bsky.social
The pieces we publish at Women* Write the Balkans transcend our platform. They have roots, histories, vivid afterlives, and we love to hear about it all. Before Balkan Blooms blossoms, savor our past pieces like “Balkan Waters” by Rebecca Duras.

www.womenwritethebalkans.com/essays/balka...
Women* Write the Balkans Community with pomegranate logo above and wave image below "The piece had a funny after-life: I had some trouble when registering for my master's in Niš because when they were looking over my documents, they did the Serbian thing of transliterating my name and managed to do it wrong on some of the documents. One of the professors googled me to check the proper spelling of my name and came across this piece, then emailed me to compliment it." Rebecca Duras, the author of "Balkan Waters"
March 25, 2025 at 12:52 PM
womenwritebalkans.bsky.social
As we prepare for hibernation, our minds turn to blooms. Submit 200-word pitches by Dec 20 for essays on growth, fertility, and the Balkans.
www.womenwritethebalkans.com/seasonal-sho...
Photo of lush vegetation growing on a concrete surface, with a high-rise building in the background.
November 19, 2024 at 5:56 PM
womenwritebalkans.bsky.social
The intense editorial process is an essential part of Women* Write the Balkans, yet it's invisible to our readers. We are taking you behind the scenes, where all kinds of vital discussions happen.
womenwritethebalkans.com/essays/ivanka
Screenshot - discussing the term potato burek. Lea Horvat: we'll need a trigger warning for our Bosnian readers, but I like it! Ana Sekulić: :D I was thinking the same! but sorry, I actually feel protective of croatian burek sa sirom i ostalim nadjevima Hana Grgić: hahah I agree and was debating with myself too
July 4, 2024 at 12:41 PM
womenwritebalkans.bsky.social
We are happy to announce Women* Write the Balkans Seasonal Shorts, a series of short thematic essays. This fall's theme is Balkan Ghosts. If you have a story about ghosts, real or imagined, get in touch: www.womenwritethebalkans.com/seasonal-sho... Deadline for pitches: June 30 👻
Blurry image of figures wearing long dresses and vests
June 10, 2024 at 11:27 AM