ZAGREB, 8 Sept, 2021 - The Croatian Ministry of Culture and Media has been shortlisted for the World Literacy Awards in the category "Significant Contribution to Literacy by a Nation" for its "Year of Reading" campaign, and the laureates will be declared on Wednesday evening on World Literacy Day.

The World Literacy Awards are annual recognitions given to valuable initiatives around the world that promote literacy and education, the ministry said on Wednesday.

They are divided into several categories and given to individuals and organisations for their outstanding endeavours that promote literacy. The laureates are selected by a panel of judges consisting of eminent leaders from across the globe, including literacy and literature experts, Nobel Literature Prize recipients, and award-winning authors.

Croatia has one more candidate who has been shortlisted, Prof. Anita Peti-Staničić, who has been nominated in the Academic Award category.

Her work on reading literacy consists of two tiers, both equally important and complement each other. The first is her publishing activity. The second is her activist work on putting reading literacy in the centre of interest of librarians and teachers at all school subjects.

The government declared 2021 The Year of Reading. The declaration of The Year of Reading is part of a measure from the National Strategy to Promote Reading, adopted in 2017.

International Literacy Day is an international observance, celebrated each year on 8 September, declared by UNESCO on 26 October 1966 at the 14th session of UNESCO's General Conference. It was celebrated for the first time in 1967.

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ZAGREB, 29 Aug, 2021 - The 9th World Literature Festival, to be held in Zagreb on 5-11 September, will host more than 50 international and domestic literary stars from as many as 16 countries from three continents, the Fraktura publishing house, the event's organiser, has said.

The festival will feature more than 30 literary events, two theatre plays as well as exhibitions of works by Croatian painters whose works are inspired by novels, story books or poems.

This year's festival focuses on Slovenian literature and the 100th anniversary of the French Institute in Zagreb.

The biggest stars of this year's event are Belarusian Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich and Spanish writer Manuel Vilas. The festival will also host Javier Cercas, Svetislav Basara, Michael Martens, Karl-Markus Gauss, Dror Mishani, Philippe Claudel and others.

Admission will be charged for most of the festival events that will take place at the Croatian Music Institute (Hrvatski glazbeni zavod, HGZ) and tickets are available at  https://hgz.kupiulaznicu.hr/ and at the HGZ.  

Visitors will be required to have a COVID-19 certificate, a certificate proving that they have recovered from COVID-19 in the past six months and received one dose of the vaccine, or a negative PCR test (not older than 72 hours), or an antigen test (not older than 48 hours).

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