This year’s Prozart Award winner Slovenian writer Drago Jancar was given the literary prize at the closing of the 11th PRO-ZA Balkan Literary Festival on Tuesday evening, organizers said.

Thanking the festival for the award, Jancar addressed the panel of judges, translators, and readers of his books in the Macedonian language and said his life was closely linked to the Balkan part of Europe and literature was the center of everything he was interested in.

The festival was held from Sept. 17 to 19 as part of the EU’s Creative Europe-sponsored “Read Share Enjoy” program’s Skopje Fellowship organized in cooperation with KUD Sodobnost International from Slovenia.

PRO-ZA Balkan was organized by the publishing house Prozart Media, with support from the Ministry of Culture, Traduki, Yunus Emre Turkish Cultural Center, the European Union, the Embassy of Slovenia, the Cultural and Information Center of Bulgaria in Skopje, the Cinematheque, the National Gallery, SPONA, Bovin, and Umno.mk.