At the press conference of the Writers' Association of Macedonia for the occasion of the announcement of the winners of this year's Association awards, President Živko Grozdanovski informed that the collection of short stories "Storyteller" by Žarko Kujundjiski, published by "Antolog", is the winner of the "Stale Popov" award for best prose work.
At the press conference, he shared that for the "Stale Popov" award for 2024, a total of 11 works by members of the association were submitted to the competition. The decision was made by the jury committee consisting of President Liljana Pandeva and members Petar Andonovski and Blaže Minevski.
As stated in the committee's explanation, this award-winning collection is composed of various short stories written over a long period of timewhich is noticeable in the style, language and structure of the work. What they all have in common is that they have the story - both its creation and its growth to almost apocalyptic or banal endings. Regardless of whether the stories are composed of only ten words or four thousand words, Kujundzjiski's lush language "comes to life" in his stories and enlivens them, giving a rhythm to the collection itself. Since the collection begins with the shortest story and endswith a rather long essay, it is obvious that the author plays with the form. He lives with each story, in every line, in every word. Hence the title "Storyteller", which applies to each of us, but today mostly to Žarko Kujundjhiski.
