Collected Works in Contemporary Art and Literature

  • The Non-Centrality of the Character

    Dritan Kiçi

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    An essay on why vivid prose centers action rather than characters, showing how pronouns can conceal weak sentences and stall narrative momentum.

  • Fancy Formatting in Poetry

    Dritan Kiçi

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    Fancy formatting in poetry flatters mediocrity. Real verse lives in the voice, not on the page.

  • European vs American Writing: Proximity and Distance

    Dritan Kiçi

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    European literature is born from enforced proximity. From the impossibility of sealing oneself off completely. From the daily friction of languages, classes, resentments, affections, histories, all occupying the same physical space.

  • Why Belgium Subsidizes Languages Instead of Writers

    Dritan Kiçi

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    Belgium funds languages, not writers—protecting symbols over people in a multilingual society where English quietly leads among the young. “When subsidies are attached to language rather than to writers, the system quietly stops rewarding creation and starts rewarding compliance.”

  • TBR Winter 2025 | Return to inward examination

    The Brussels Review

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    Across nonfiction, poetry, fiction, and visual art, the issue examines how individuals are shaped by inheritance, memory, power, and silence; and how meaning is constructed when continuity is broken, distorted, or deliberately resisted.

  • The Brussels Review Is Not a Dating App

    Dritan Kiçi

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    The Brussels Review defends its editorial stance: literature before identity, art before personal labels, and words before hashtags. “The rule is simple: if something about you is relevant to the work, it goes in. If not, it doesn’t… That is where a writer speaks: through language, not labelling.”