Tina Dobrajc

Tina Dobrajc (1984) obtained her master’s degree in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. Her paintings have featured in solo exhibitions and are regularly included in group exhibitions. As an illustrator, she is active in the field of children’s and young adult illustration. She illustrated several children’s picture books for various publishers in Slovenia, with the books also translated into a number of other languages. She received the Hinko Smrekar Distinction for Aleš Šteger’s young adult novel Kurent, and the Special Prize for Outstanding Integration of Artistic Genres at the Kristina Brenkova Awards for the children’s picture book Sofia and the Ballet Slippers by Helena Kraljič. Maša Ogrizek’s book Fox Moon, with illustrations by Dobrajc, received the Večernica Award and was nominated for the Desetnica Award. Dobrajc is also the recipient of the Rihard Jakopič Honourable Mention for Achievements in Painting.

Tina Volarič

Tina Volarič (1980) regularly provides illustrations for major Slovenian children’s magazines, album artwork, and covers of fiction and humanities books, and also designs original picture books for children and adults. From time to time, she also works on independent conceptual series that often draw on gentle nostalgia, the intimate domestic space, and memories. She is the author of the award-winning wordless picture book The Line (2021), which received the Golden Pear Rating and was included in the IBBY Silent Books Collection, as well as the original picture book Nono’s Wall (2021), the picture book Carl and Stan by Marko Klavora and David Kožuh (2023), and others. Her debut picture book The Story of Little Bambule and the Dizzying Giraffe by Fran Milčinski Ježek (2010) received the Best Book Design Award at the Slovenian Book Fair. She also illustrated her award-winning poetry debut, The Circumference of Polyphonic Silences (2014). Her works have featured in solo exhibitions and group selections in Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Italy, Poland, Portugal, and China, and she has participated in illustration biennials in Ljubljana, Zagreb, Belgrade, and Bratislava.

Tomaž Lavrič

Tomaž Lavrič (1964) works in illustration, political caricature, and comics. As a caricaturist, he has been a permanent contributor to the magazine Mladina since 1988, where his best-known work, the satirical comic strip Diarrhoea, has been published for three decades. So far, more than forty of his comic books have been published in Slovenia and around the world. In 1999 he received the Grand Prix at the Festival de BD à Sierre in Switzerland and the Lion d’Argent at the Lion Awards in Brussels for the graphic novel Bosnian Fables. Decalogue and Red Alert were nominated for an Angoulême Award, while Slovenian Classics in Comics Form 2 received a Zlatirepec Award. He also illustrated the Kuzma the Gremlin books by Svetlana Makarovič and Four Black Ants by Anja Štefan, and, most recently, his own poetry collection Otto the Little Worm. He held solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana in 2010 and the Cankar Centre in 2015. He has received the Medal of Merit from the President of the Republic of Slovenia and the Prešeren Fund Award for his work.

Žiga X Gombač

Žiga X Gombač (1976) comes from Ljubljana, where he studied journalism and worked as a music editor, copywriter, and editor. He is currently the host and editor of the first podcast for young people on national radio in Slovenia. Telling and creating stories, both in books and at events, is an important part of his life. Over the last twelve years, he has written and published numerous stories, poems and comics for children, as well as works for adults, which were published in magazines and books. He has received several awards for his work and wide international acclaim for Adam in njegova tuba (Adam and His Tuba) (Miš, 2022), which was recently published in English at NorthSouth Books.

Zoran Smiljanić

Zoran Smiljanić (1961) has drawn around 1700 comic book pages. His early comics were politically engaged, explicit, and provocative. In 1987, he published his first graphic novel Hardfuckers, provoking the socialist government of the time. He addressed Slovenia’s past and present in the War Stories and Family Stories cycles. Since 2000 he has tackled historical and biographical topics. Together with co-scriptwriter Marijan Pušavec, he created the most extensive Slovenian graphic epic, Mexikaners, which contains 350 hand-coloured pages. In the graphic novel The Final Flight of Toni Mrlak, he discusses the dark aspects of the Slovenian War of Independence. This was followed by the biographies of Plečnik, Kajuh, and Cankar. The latter received the Book of the Year Award at the Slovenian Book Fair and the Zlatirepec Award. He also received the latter for his historical graphic novel Black Flame: The Arson of the Slovenian National Centre in Trieste (2020). He is the recipient of the Hudi Maček Award and the City of Kranj Award for his contributions to the recognition and unique landscape of Slovenian comics. His comics have been translated into German, Italian, English, and Czech.

Zvonko Čoh

Zvonko Čoh (1956) is an illustrator and animator. At the start of his career he focused mostly on animated films, his oeuvre including more than 20 TV spots and short films. He received the Best Animation Award at the International Animated Film Festival in Treviso for the short film Kiss Me, Soft Eraser. The feature-length animated film Socialisation of a Bull? on which he collaborated with Milan Erič won the Prešeren Fund Award. As an illustrator, he initially worked mostly on young adult books and children’s periodicals, but now he focuses primarily on children’s books. His illustrations in more than 100 books for children and young adult books have won him numerous awards, including the Golden Pen of Belgrade and the Levstik Award. His series of illustrated books about Kekec received the Hinko Smrekar Award, while his book Puss in Boots received the Best Book Design Award in the Children’s and Young Adult category. In 2015 he received the Levstik Lifetime Achievement Award.