Literature Has a Woman's Face Too

"I literatura ima žensko lice" — Literature Has a Woman's Face Too — is a regional festival devoted entirely to women's literature, held in Berane each March. The 2025 edition ran from 12 to 14 March, confirming the festival's place as a fixture of early spring in Montenegro's northeast.

March in Berane is early spring in a mountain valley: snow still bright on the high ridges of Bjelasica, the Lim running full, and cultural life concentrated indoors — conditions under which a literary festival makes perfect sense. The town takes evident pride in hosting a programme whose reach extends far beyond the valley.

Over three days, the festival gathers leading female authors from across the former Yugoslavia for readings, conversations and encounters with readers. It is one of the few stages in the region where women's writing is not a panel within a larger festival but the entire point — a deliberate correction to literary programmes that have historically looked very different.

Each edition is built around a theme that gives the programme a fresh angle: in 2025 the festival gathered under the title "Nasljednice" — "Heiresses". The themed approach keeps the conversations focused and gives returning visitors a genuinely new festival each year.

The format favours conversation over ceremony: readings run into discussions, discussions into signings, and the compact venues mean readers genuinely meet the authors rather than glimpse them across a hall. For anyone who reads the region's languages, it is three days of unusually direct literary contact.

All events are free to attend. The festival takes place in Berane over three days in March — a reason to visit the northeast in a season when few other cultural events compete for attention.