The international literary festival Novotvar, founded in 2016, aspires to create a living image of contemporary literature. Every year, the festival introduces its audience to a diverse range of renowned Slovak and foreign authors in the field of prose and poetry, while also giving space to emerging authors.

During the several years of its existence, Novotvar has hosted prominent names of contemporary world literature. These have included Israeli author Etgar Keret, Italian novelist Simona Vinci, German novelists Olga Grjasnowa and Michael Kupfmüller, the leading Czech prose writer Petra Hůlová, and one of the most respected contemporary Hungarian authors, Krisztina Tóth. The festival also featured internationally distinguished figures of contemporary world poetry, such as Anne Carson, Luljeta Llhesanaku (Albania), Marko Pogačar (Croatia) and experimental poet Ferdinand Schmatz (Austria). Among the local authors who read at the festival are poets Ivan Štrpka, Michal Habaj, Peter Šulej, Mária Ferenčuhová, Eva Luka and Katarína Kucbelová, and prose writers Michal Hvorecký, Richard Pupala, Veronika Šikulová, Ivana Gibová or Jana Juráňová.

The ambition of the festival is to actively expand public interest in Slovak as well as foreign contemporary literature, to promote new, progressive and artistically valuable literary works, to introduce them to the widest possible circle of the cultural public, and in this way to support their dissemination at the same time.

The organizing team of the Novotvar Festival