Miklavž Komelj

Miklavž Komelj (b. 1973) is a poet, writer, essayist, translator and art historian. He has published several books of poetry, prose works, a verse drama, books for children, and some scholarly and essayist works. He also translates from different languages (including Juana Inés de la Cruz, Petar Petrović Njegoš, Fernando Pessoa, César Vallejo, Djuna Barnes, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Alejandra Pizarnik). He has had three solo painting exhibitions. He has edited Collected Poems by Jure Detela, and two books of previously uncollected Srečko Kosovel’s writings, Let Me Be Unknown to All. Slovenska matica has published his debut novel, Cover Me, Snow.

Irene Mislej (b. 1946 in Buenos Aires to Slovenian parents) attended a Spanish and English primary school, and graduated from a grammar school, Colego nacional de Vicente Lopez, in 1963. She studied journalism and radio broadcasting, and art history in Buenos Aires. She contributed to different newspapers as a journalist. After returning to Slovenia in 1978, she first lived in Ljubljana, where she earned a PhD in art history in 1987 at the Faculty of Arts, and was then the head of Pilon Gallery of Ajdovščina for eighteen years, organising his art estate, researching his opus as well as work by his contemporaries, evaluating his correspondence and publishing parts of it. She concluded her expert gallery work as a senior curator. She also researched Pilon’s family tree and edited the memories given by his son and others testifiers. She put up exhibitions of his opus, both in Pilon’s home gallery and in other institutions, and she participated in a retrospective exhibition of his work in Ljubljana Modern Gallery and in his anthology exhibitions in Italy, France and Austria.

Milan Dekleva

Milan Dekleva is a Slovenian poet, writer, playwright, journalist, editor, composer, musician and translator, born on October 17, 1946 in Ljubljana. He graduated in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana. He worked as an editor at RTV Slovenia, but also worked at Radio Študent and the newspaper companies Dnevnik and Tribuna. Dekleva is best known as a writer, especially as an author of lyrical poetry, but he is also a rugby player and a member of the Slovenian music group Salamander (which included many well-known Slovenian artists, such as Lado Jakša, Bogdana Herman, Tomaž Pengov, Jerko Novak, Matjaž Krainer, Sašo Malahovsky, Božidar Ogorevc, Meta Stare, Metka Zupančič). He is also a composer of incidental music. A superb, insightful translator, he has translated many children's picture books with humour, ingenuity, and originality. He has also written many amusing picture books for young children, as well as numerous collections of poetry for children.

Milan Šelj

Milan Šelj, poet and translator, has lived in London since 1992. His first poetry collection Darilo (Gift) was published in 2006. Kristali soli (Crystals of Salt) followed in 2010, Gradim gradove (Building Build- ings) in 2015 and Slediti neizgovorjenemu (Tracing the Unspoken) in 2018 (all published by ŠKUC-Lambda in Ljubljana).

His poems have been translated into several languages and published in Hebrew in an antholo- gy Cavafy’s Sons and Grandsons in Israel in 2015, a substantial selection in Italian translation in the magazine Fili d’aquilone and in English translation in The Riveter magazine in the UK. He contributed several translations for Moral bi spet priti (Anthology of Contemporary European Gay Poetry, published by ŠKUC-Lambda, 2009) and Brez besed ji sledim (An- thology of Contemporary European Lesbian Poetry, published by ŠKUC-Lambda, 2016). He was invited to present his poetry at the University of Nottingham and at UCL in London. He presented Slovenian LGBTQ literature with other authors in Berlin in 2017, in Sarajevo in 2019 and in Lisbon in 2020.

His poetry collection Tracing the Unspoken was published in English translation by A Midsummer Night’s Press in New York in 2019, and his first illustrated poetry book for children Kosmatice was published by Zala in 2020.

Miša Pušenjak

The author is an agronomist by education. She often points out that few people are so lucky as to combine their profession into a popular hobby. Additionally, she has gained extensive knowledge by working as a breeder at the Selection and Promotion Centre of Semenarna Ljubljana in Ptuj. There, she worked on 40 hectares of land, which represented a large garden. Her current job offers her even more joy, but above all the opportunity to expand her knowledge and learn new things. She is an agricultural adviser at the Chamber of Agriculture and Forestry of Slovenia. At the Agricultural and Forestry Institute Maribor she works as a specialist in vegetable growing and arable farming. She is always in direct contact with professional vegetable growers who, despite the many obstacles, try to produce the freshest and healthiest vegetables possible in our country, even though they are not organic producers. The author’s main goal is to grow as many home-grown vegetables as possible in Slovenia. Moreover, she also offers advice to amateur gardeners, guiding them towards growing organic vegetables. 

 Her manuals, such as: Zelenjavni vrt (‘Vegetable Garden’), Moj ekovrt (‘My Eco Garden’), Vodnik po vrtu (‘The Garden Guide’), Rastlinjaki na vrtu (‘Greenhouses in the Garden’), Visoke grede in vrtički v posodah (‘Raised Beds and Container Gardens’), Zemlja – naše osnovno orodje (‘The Soil – Our Basic Tool’), Naravno varstvo vrtnin (‘Natural Protection of Vegetables’), Semenarstvo – kako pridelati kakovostno seme (‘Seed Production – How to Produce Quality Seed’), Vrtnarimo z Mišo Pušenjak (‘Gardening with Miša Pušenjak’) are all bestsellers that have been reprinted several times.

Mitja Čander

For decades, Mitja Čander (1974) has been one of the most influential figures in Slovenia’s literary and publishing world – even though his literary debut, Blind Man (Slepec), appeared only in 2019. An editor and literary critic, the co-founder and director of Beletrina Academic Press, essayist, screenwriter, dramaturge, columnist, and candidate for national chess master, Čander has accomplished many things in his career and taken a leading role in a number of major projects, such as Maribor – The European Capital of Culture (2012). Since 1992, he has published many articles and essays on Slovenian and world literature and received numerous awards for his work. A wide- ranging intellectual, he is a regular participant

in discussions that reach far beyond the cultural sphere, so it was only a matter of time (and genre) before he tried his hand at writing fiction.

Mojca Kumerdej

Mojca Kumerdej (1964) is an award-winning writer and philos- opher. She also works as a critic, covering dance, performance and intermedia arts. Her first novel, Baptism above Triglav (Krst nad Triglavom, 2001), was an ironic look at Slovenian cultural and literary traditions. Her two collections of short prose, Fragma (2003) and Dark Matter (Temna snov, 2011), show an utterly original world, one that derives from the inner corners of contemporary society. Her latest novel, The Harvest of Chronos (Kro- nosova žetev, 2016) is a picturesque portrait of the 16th century, which won her the Kritiško sito Award for best book of the year awarded by the Slovenian Literary Critics’ Association and the Prešeren Fund Award, Slovenia’s highest award for artistic achievement, and was also shortlisted for the Kresnik Award for best novel of the year. Her prose has been translated into over ten languages and included in various anthologies at home and abroad.

Mojca Sekulič Fo

Mojca Sekulič Fo was born in Ljubljana, where she graduated at the Faculty of Architecture. She started working as an architect but continued her creative path in the field of illustration and design. She works for different clients, masters different art techniques and intertwines them in a completely unique way: in acrylic technique and in combinations with metal and wood. She has participated in more than 30 group and solo exhibitions.

Mojca Urek

Mojca Urek (1966) is an Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Work. She has undertaken research on the narrative approaches in social work, mental health, deinstitutionalisation, gender‐based violence and LGBTQ+ issues. She was the national lead in five European research projects. She is the co‐author of six monographs.

Nataša Konc Lorenzutti

Nataša is an actress, writer and poet. She writes mainly for children’s magazines, but has also published a few works for adults. For her literary work she received several awards.

Nataša Sukič

Nataša Sukič (1962) made her debut as a writer in 2005 with her short story collection Desperadosi in nomadi (Desperados and Nomads), followed by another short story collection Otroci nočnih rož (Night Flowers’ Children) in 2008 that was shortlisted for the Dnevnik Fabula Award.

Then came a change in course – she switched from short prose, in which her fragmentism often made it difficult to make out its short story form, to novels: 2010 saw the release of her novel Molji živijo v prahu (Moths Live in the Dust), followed by the novel Kino (Cinema) in 2013 that made it into the top ten for the Kresnik Literary Award and Piknik (Picnic) in 2015 (finalist for the Kresnik Literary Award). The latter is Nataša Sukič’ fifth literary work that is elusive in terms of form as it can be read both as a novel or a book of short stories. Then followed the novel Bazen (The Pool) that made it into the ten top for the Kresnik Literary Award in 2018. Her latest novel Amplituda: remiksi in drugo (Amplitude: remixes and another) was published in 2020.