Leon Marc

Leon Marc (1968) is a diplomat and publicist, originally from the Vipava Valley. So far, he has served for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Portugal, the Netherlands and Ireland, while also working as a writer of articles in "Tretji dan" and a correspondent for the "Katoliški glas" (today Novi Glas). He pays a lot of attention to issues of religion and the Church. The novel Cathedrals, small and large is his literary debut.

Lev Centrih

Lev Centrih (1979) is a sociologist and historian who specialises in social and political movements of the 19th and 20th centuries. He is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Primorska, and a researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History in Ljubljana.

Lojze Kovačič

Lojze Kovačič (1928–2004) has established himself as a powerful Slovenian voice in the modern literary canon. His works articulate the limits of the human condition in an introspective and highly philosophical manner, whilst also exploring morality and existential topics such as life and death, displacement and exile, dream

and reality. Although born in Switzerland, Kovačič was exiled to Ljubljana, Slovenia with his German mother and Slovenian father in 1938. As the acclaimed recipient of the Prešeren Award, Slovenia’s highest award for artistic achievement, in 1973 and a three-time winner of the Kresnik Award for best novel of the year in 1991, 2004 and 2016 – the latter being the Silver Kresnik Award – Kovačič was an accomplished author of both children’s and

adult fiction who left behind a

luminescent literary legacy and has been compared to great Central European writers such as Danilo Kiš, Sándor Márai, Imre Kertész and Ismail Kadare.

Luka Culiberg

Luka Culiberg (1978) is an Assistant Professor and Head of the Department of Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. His fields of interest are Japanese history, society, and culture. His research also extends to the fields of the epistemology of sociological research, language and society, capitalism, modernity and the nation state.

Maja Breznik

Maja Breznik (1967) is a sociologist and a senior researcher at the Peace Institute, Ljubljana. Her main research interest is changing working conditions in global economic restructuring. The most recent book she published is Wage Labour: A Critique of Precarity Theories (Založba Sophia, Ljubljana, 2021).

Maja Lubi

Maja Lubi was born in Ljubljana. She attended the Secondary School of Design and Photography and in 1999 she received further education at the Technical College for Drawing and Painting in Ljubljana. In 2008 she graduated as a professor of fine arts at the Faculty of Education in Ljubljana. Since 2005, she has been regularly publishing her work in children's magazines and participating as an illustrator in various projects, but most of her time is spent on children's books. Her recent picture books, Lara's secret (Larina skrivnost), Two grandpas (Dva dedka), There is enough love for everyone (Ljubezni je za vse dovolj), I Have Down Syndrome (Imam downov sindrom ), and others, have been well received abroad and translated into several languages. She has had many solo exhibitions and participated in some important group showcases of illustrations, such as the Slovenian Biennial of Illustration. She is self-employed in culture as an illustrator. She lives and works in Ljubljana.

Marij Čuk

Marij Čuk (Trieste, 1952) is a poet, writer, playwright, theatre critic. For ten years, he was the editor-in-chief of the Slovenian news program at the Italian radio and television station RAI. His bibliography is very extensive, including more than ten books of poetry, five novels, comedies, a drama, a radio play, and satirical radio serials.

Marija Kostnapfel

Marija Kostnapfel (Trieste, 1959) after graduating in Slovene from the Faculty of Foreign Languages of the University of Udine, got a job as a professor of Slovene and history at the Žiga Zois Institute in Gorizia. For several years, she also taught the Slovenian language at the Faculty of Education of the University of Trieste. She mainly published poetry (in the magazines Sodobnost, Zaliv, Nova revija, Mladika) and professional notes on Slovenian literature (the diploma thesis on France Balantič was translated into German and published by Rudolf Trofenik's publishing house in Munich; she published an article in the magazine Münchener Zeitschrift fur Balkankunde about the still unknown letter of F.M. Appendini to Matija Čop). In 2016, her first poetry collection, Pesmi (Poems), was published by the Mladika publishing house. In 2018, the songs were also published in the Italian translation Pesmi/Poesie.

Marija Stanonik

Ddr. Marija Stanonik (b. 1947) is a literary historian, ethnologist and full professor of Slovenian literature. She earned a PhD degree at the University of Zagreb’s Faculty of Arts in 1993, being awarded the title of “Doctor of Social, Humanities and Religion Studies in the Field of Philology;” when her degree was recognised by the Ljubljana Faculty of Arts in 1994, the title was translated as “Doctor of Literary Sciences.” She earned a further PhD degree at the Ljubljana Faculty of Theology in 2011.

She had worked for the ZRC SAZU (Scientific Research Centre of Slovenian Academy of Arts and Sciences)’s Institute of Slovenian Ethnology, became a research fellow in 1994, and began to teach literary folk traditions at the Ljubljana as well as the Maribor Faculties of Arts in 1995. She guest-lectured in Poland, Croatia and Austria. She was elected a full professor of Slovenian literature at the Ljubljana Faculty of Arts in 2008.

She has been the recipient of several recognitions and awards, a holder of the title Deserving Scholar granted by the ZRC SAZU, and an associate (since 2015) and full (since 2021) member of the SAZU in the class of philological and literary studies, as well as a member of the SAZU’s board of presidents.

 Her collection of poems Torn Roots was published in 1997, and she is the author and editor of a number of monographs. Slovenska matica published the following books by her: A History of Slovenian Literary Folk Traditions: From Middle Ages until Modern Time (2009), The Bee in a Flower and in the World (2018), With No Cross and No Name: Slovenian Poetry of the Other Side during and after World War II (2022) and, in co-authorship, Long Distance Love. Letters of a Husband to his Wife in Alexandria, Egypt (2022).

Marjan Manček

Marjan Manček is a Slovenian illustrator, comic book artist and film animator, born in 1948 in Novo mesto. He attended primary and secondary school in his native Novo mesto, and graduated from the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana with a degree in English language and History. He was a teacher for a few months and then editor of the youth section of the Borec publishing house for about a year. For thirty-five years he worked freelance as a cartoonist, illustrator and film animator. He published his first cartoons in the humorous weekly Pavliha when he was still in secondary school. During his studies, he earned his living by drawing cartoons and comic shorts for Slovenian and foreign newspapers.

His cartoons were published in two European anthologies of cartoon humour and satire, Opus International (Paris, 1972) and Satyricon (Berlin, 1980). He illustrated more than 200 books (Mojca Pokrajculja (Mary Halpence), Kozlovska sodba v Višnji gori (Višnja gora goat trial), Pedenjped, Kraljična na zrnu graha (The princess and the pea) etc.) and created several cartoon characters (Modri medvedek (Blue Bear), Cufek (Fuzzy), Medvedek Brundo (Hummy Bear), Dajnomir and Miliboža). In 1993, he adapted his comic strip characters, which first appeared in youth magazines, to the medium of animated cartoons. He created an animated trailer and artwork for a puppet for the TV show Radovedni Taček (Curious Pup).

Theatre, film and exhibitions: He has designed the art several puppet shows for the Ljubljana Puppet Theatre (Za devetimi vrati (Behind the Ninth Door), Kozlovska sodba v Višnji Gori (Višnja gora goat trial), Grofič prašič (Count Pig), Vrtec pri stari kozi (Old goat’s kindergarten) etc.) In his career as an illustrator, he has collaborated with many Slovenian poets and writers (Niko Grafenauer, Boris A. Novak, Polonca Kovač, Slavko Pregl, Miroslav Košuta, Berta Golob...). He has had solo and group exhibitions in Slovenia and abroad (Ankara, Bratislava, Barcelona, Udine, etc.), and his films have been screened at film festivals in Portorož, Belgrade, Krakow, Annecy, Chicago and elsewhere.