LEA YPI IS COMING TO SKOPJE - WINNER OF THE "BOOKSTAR" AWARD 2026!
We are pleased to announce that on August 24 (Monday), as part of the BookStar festival 2026, the famous philosopher, author and professor Lea Ypi who lives and works in the United Kingdom, will be a guest in Skopje. Her visit will also mark the first official pre-event of this year's edition of the international literary festival "BookStar", dedicated to the theme or "FREE AT LEST?".
Ypi arrives in Skopje, as the author of the „Слобода“ (Free)a work in which, through personal and collective history, she opens up one of the most important and complex questions of contemporary society: what does it really mean to be free?
The book is both a philosophical research and a personal testimony, in which the concept of freedom is examined through various historical, political and social contexts.Through her experiences from childhood in Albania during communism, he transition and later life in Western Europe, Ypi asks questions about the boundaries between personal and political freedom, about the way societies understand free choice and about how much our idea of freedom depends on the time and place in which we live. Freedom can be a personal experience, but also a political issue, and equally a creative challenge. For that reason, the book “Free” is the winner of the 2026 BookStar Award for the most relevant book in the context of this year’s festival edition.
The award will be presented on August 24 at 7 p.m. in "Laboratorium", at the pre-event with which BookStar begins its festival journey towards the main program in September this year.
Writer and university professor Ivana Trajanoska will speak about the book and the decision to bestow it with the BookStar award..
The award ceremony will be followed by a conversation with Ypi, moderated by writer and professor Kalina Maleska who is also the translator of the book into Macedonian. The conversation will focus on her literary and philosophical understanding of freedom, the relationship between personal memory and major historical events, and the question of what remains of the idea of freedom when it is confronted with reality.
The conversation at the event will be in English.
A podcast with Lea Ypi
That same day, at 6 pm in "Laboratorium", before the official award ceremony, Ypi will also be a guest on “Antolog’s” literary podcast, which has been hosted by literary critic Duško Krstevski for years.
With this conversation, in a somewhat more informal format, there will be an opportunity to hear a different side of the author – not only the professor of political theory and philosophy, but also the reader, writer and interlocutor who turns her personal experiences into questions of universal significance.
The two meetings with Lea Ypi – the podcast "Naked Lunch" and the ceremonial award ceremony of the "BookStar" award – are the first part of the BookStar 2026 European Literature Festival, which main festival program will be held from September 28 to September 30 in Skopje.
With the theme "FREE AT LeAST!", BookStar poses freedom as an open question: is it a right, privilege or responsibility? How free are we really in the world of algorithms, artificial intelligence and constant digital exposure? And can literature (still) be a space for freedom of thought, questioning, and resistance? LeaYpi's guest appearance and the book "Free" are a natural and powerful introduction to these questions.
About Lea Ypi
Lea Ypi was born in 1979 in Durres, Albania. She is a university professor, teaching political theory at the London School of Economics. She studied philosophy and literature at the Sapienza University of Rome, and received her doctorate from the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence. Her field of scientific interest includes normative political theory, the political thought of the Enlightenment (Kant), Marxism, critical theory, nationalism, and the intellectual history of the Balkans (especially Albania). She has published numerous works in the field of political theory.
Recently, the British magazine Prospect has listed her among the ten most important world thinkers.
She is the author of several academic books, while she became widely known to a broader readership through her memoir Free: Coming of Age at the End of History. The book received the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize" and the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize," and was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award, the Baillie Gifford Prize, and the Gordon Burn Prize. It was named Book of the Year by The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Financial Times, The Times Literary Supplement, Foreign Affairs, and The Sunday Times.She has been translated into more than 35 languages, and was published in Macedonian by thepublishing house Ili-ili in 2024.
About the 12th edition of the festival Bookstar 2026
The BookStar Festival, in its 12th edition, raises the question WHY FREEDOM? or inspired by the words of Martin Luther King Jr.: “No one is free until we are all free.”The festival is a call to reflect on freedom as one of the most valuable and fragile human conditions. At a time when borders – visible and invisible – are reappearing around us, literature remains a space in which thought can move without limits.
Freedom in writing means the opportunity for the author to ask the question that others are afraid to say, to tell a story that presents reality from a new angle and to create a world in which diversity is not an obstacle, but an asset. This is why literature has always been a place of resistance, imagination and dialogue.
With FREE AT LеAST?,BookStar celebrates freedom in its many forms: freedom of expression, of thought, of movement, but also the freedom to be yourself. Through conversations with authors, literary readings, open discussions and festival meetings, this edition will open the topic of how literature preserves, defends and constantly rethinks the idea of freedom. Finally free? or Free at least? what does that mean and is it the same thing? Or, in the Macedonian context, we can also talk about “From Freedom or Death! to the Sun of Freedom!”"
The overall design of this year’s Festival is the work of writer and graphic artist Branko Prlja.
Previous winners of the BookStar Award include: Blazhe Minevski (Macedonia), Jón Kalman Stefánsson (Iceland), Najat El Hachmi (Spain), Svetlana Alexievich (Belarus), Miodrag Majić (Serbia), Niccolò Ammaniti (Italy), Evgeny Vodolazkin (Russia), Slavenka Drakulić (Croatia), Jussi Adler-Olsen (Denmark), and Esmahan Aykol (Turkey/Germany).
The "BookStar" 2026 festival is held under the slogan "FREE AT LeAST" and is supported by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Komercijalna Banka, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the publishing house "Antolog", with individual events and guest appearances are also realized with the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of Spain, Traduki, the Netherlands Literature Fund, as well as the European Union. The poster design is the work of Branko Prlja. The media sponsor of the event is the Macedonian Radio Television.
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