Irena Stanic Rasin
AUTHORS AND ILLUSTRATORS
Photo by Robert Gojevic
Tomislav Torjanac
Illustrator and Graphic Designer
Tomislav is an award-winning Croatian illustrator and painter. Internationally, his best-known work is the 2007 illustrated edition of Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi, which has been published in eleven countries, including the UK, US, Canada, and China. The same edition won first prize at the British Book Design and Production Awards in 2008.
Tomislav has participated in a number of group exhibitions in Croatia and abroad and had solo shows in London, Croatia, and Slovenia. He has also held lectures and presentations in fourteen US cities.
In Croatia, Tomislav has been lauded for his work with several awards for best illustrated children’s book. In 2012, he was also awarded the Grand Prix at the Fourth Croatian Biennial of Illustration.
Ivana Rasin
Barbara Baždarić
Author and Translator
Barbara, a native of Pula, Istria, graduated in English and Italian language and literature at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. She is currently working as an English and Italian language teacher at Jastrebarsko High School in Croatia. In 2014, she received an award for the project "GESTA", which was declared the best project in Croatia in the category of creative and innovative educational program on the Day of Creativity and Innovation. The program was organized under the auspices of the President of the Republic of Croatia and with the support of the Ministry of Economy, Ministry of Culture, Zagreb City Assembly, Croatian Chamber of Commerce, Croatian Competitiveness Cluster and the Association of Cities, Ministry of Entrepreneurship and Crafts, Ministry of Tourism and the city of Zagreb.
In 2018, Barbara published her poetic debut Grizem (I Bite) , followed by her second collection of poems Mislim da sam vidjela izvanzemaljca (I Think I Saw an Alien) in 2019. published with the financial support of the Croatian Ministry of Culture and Media. Pandora's Box for Sale/Pandorina kutija na rasprodaji is her third poetry book, and her first bilingual publication, published by Perlina Press and with financial support by the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia.
Barbara’s poems have been published on portals and on several occasions in the Republika literary magazine. She was among about thirty selected authors of the collection In the Network of Verses in 2019. Some of her poems were translated into Albanian and published in the literary magazine Doruntina. Barbara is one of the participants in the "Morning of Poetry" forum. She is the editor and host of the show on culture "The comma is my weak point" on Radio Jaska.
Photo by Boris Ščitar
Marina Šur Puhlovski
Author
Marina Šur Puhlovski was born in Zagreb on September 20, 1948. She obtained her M.A. in Comparative Literature and Philosophy at the University of Zagreb.
During her youth, she was engaged in journalism, and, for a while, in literary criticism, after which she decided to commit herself to literary writing.
Marina began writing poetry in early childhood, and later, during her studies, she focused on prose. The first story, "Under the Table", was published in 1974 in the Journal of the Croatian Writers' Republika. Since then, she has published stories in numerous literary magazines and newspapers. Her first book, a novel Trojanska kobila (The Trojan Mare) was published in 1991 - just before the outbreak of the war in former Yugoslavia. By 1991, however, she had nine unpublished books, adamantly refusing to fit into the 'postmodernist' generation, then active, close-knit and praised. She openly distanced herself from that circle and pursued her own literary 'voice,' not recognized at the time. "You're not going to publish anything for a long time now," the reviewer of "Trojan Mare" said to her, and so it was like that, indeed. War broke out, everything else was on stand-by.
During the war, however, Marina still published stories in magazines, and Ništarija (A Good-for-Nothing Man), a novel she had written in her youth, was published in two parts in 'Forum' (Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts). It was only in 1996, when she was 48, that her second collection of short stories - written when she was 30 - A Rabbit in the Attic was published. In the following twenty years, she managed to publish all the books 'from her drawer,' publishing one, and even two a year, together with those she was writing alongside - a total of twenty titles. Her novels were always longlisted or shortlisted for prominent Croatian literary awards. Her novel Divljakuša (Wild Woman, translated by Christina Pribichevich-Zoric and published by Istros Books in 2019) won the publishing house VBZ's prize for the best unpublished novel of the year 2018 and soon became a literary bestseller.
Marina's interests are diverse, and apart from six novels and six story collections, she has written and published a collection of songs in prose, two travel books about the Adriatic, a collection of essays on the meaning of literature and the difference between art and sophisticated kitsch, a collection of mini-essays, and several books of mixed genres (travel, journal, aphorisms).
