The competition under the title “Tell me a story”, has an intent to encourage new creative writing inspired by the power of authors who greatly influenced the childhoods of all of us, from its simplicity, carefree-ness and curiosity. Thus are Kino from Argentina with her Mafalda, Elvira Lindo from Spain with Manolito Gafotas and the Macedonian Olivera Nikolova who marked our childhood with the characters from “Zoki Poki”.

The submissions on the following topics: “The child in me”, “I will tell you a story”, “What can the whole world be bought with?” can be written in the format of a short story or illustrated story - comic, in Macedonian or Spanish language. They should be delivered in the “Casta Diva” office printed, in an envelope, with a code, by 12th of December 2024 at the latest. The best participants will receive valuable prizes. Their names will be announced on the 22nd of December 2024.

Olivera Nikolova, one of the most distinguished female Macedonian writers, has died on the 3rd of November 2024, aged 88. She is survived by her husband Aleksandar Cane Andreevski, also a writer, her son Zlatko, her daughter Jana and grand daughter Marika.

“Nikolova was and still is the first lady of the contemporary Macedonian prose. We all remember the classic book for children ‘Zoki Poki’, recently even filmed. She was disarmingly modest and noble as a person, but at the same time possessed the huge acumen of diverse topics, literate motifs, experimenting with styles....”

          -Natasha Avramovska

“Sixty years of life entirely devoted to the art of language and literature. Primordial devotion, unobtrusive, dignified and self-aware. From storyteller and dramatist of children’s dreams and longings, Olivera became storyteller and romanticist who rethinks adventures with female, feministic mark of the woman from our Macedonian, Balkan and European spaces, in the past and today...”

          -Katica Kjulafkova

“We have sent away the best female writer that the Macedonian language created and gave birth to.... She wanted to talk about smallest, most unimportant things, but wrote about biggest, most essential things. It was never the opposite...She will be remembered by the smallest details which consist her grandiose opus...”

          -Olivera Kjorveziroska

“On us, her descendants, will depend whether we can be compared by her stringent writing criteria and will create not for glory, but for that wondrous, quiet glee of writing that she herself had experienced so strongly. The source of the strength of her word and story was really the joy of writing.”

          -Kica Kolbe

“In the oeuvre of Olivera Nikolova, Macedonian literature and culture had their most abundant source of subjects, contexts, intellectual and emotional laboratories. Her work is exactly that, magic lab of human psychology, of life’s challenges in the relationships.”

          -Iskra Geshovska

“Olivera will be missed by us, but I hope not too much, because with every new re-reading and exploration of her work, we will be with her. She was a writer whose appearance and work left indelible mark not only in our society and cultural milieu, but also in the world’s, a person and oeuvre that we can talk about only with admiration and outstanding gratitude.”

          -Zhivko Grozdanoski