Senka Marić (born 1972) is a Bosnian writer. She is best known for her work as a poet and for her 2018 novel Kintsugi Tijela, which draws from the author's own experiences with breast cancer. Marić is also co-founder and editor-in-chief of the literary journal Strane.
Biography
editSenka Marić was born in Mostar, a city in southern Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 1972.[1][2][3] She began writing poetry when she was eight years old.[4] After finishing secondary school, she studied theater education and comparative literature at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Mostar, and the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Sarajevo.[1][2]
From 1991 to 1997, Marić fled the Bosnian War and lived in the United Kingdom, where she trained as a stylist at the Vidal Sassoon Academy in London.[1][5]
After the war, she returned to Mostar, where she now works as a poet, novelist, translator, and journal editor. She runs the online literary journal Strane, which she co-founded in 2014 with Almin Kaplan and Srđan Gavrilović.[1][3][5] Marić, who writes in Bosnian,[6] also translates others' writing from English.[2]
Marić is a breast cancer survivor, and her work frequently deals with this experience.[4][5][7][8]
She has published three books of poetry: Odavde do nigdje ("From Here to Nowhere", 1997), To su samo riječi ("These Are Just Words", 2005), and Do smrti naredne ("Until the Next Death", 2016).[1][2][4][9][7] Her debut novel, Kintsugi Tijela, was published in 2018; it is based on the author's own experience with cancer, with the novel's narrator reexamining her childhood as she deals with illness and treatment. In 2019, it won the Meša Selimović prize, a major literary award for novels published in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, and Serbia.[5][9][10] Kintsugi Tijela has been translated into English by Celia Hawkesworth, and was published by Peirene Press under the title Body Kintsugi in late 2022; it became the first Bosnian winner of the PEN Translates award in 2021.[5][11][12]
Marić has also twice received the Zija Dizdarević short story award, the top prize for short fiction in the country, in 2000 and 2013.[1] Critics have counted Marić as part of the first generation of female writers in Bosnia and Herzegovina who are not considered outliers because of their gender.[13]
Selected works
edit- Odavde do nigdje (poetry, 1997)
- To su samo riječi (poetry, 2005)
- Do smrti naredne (poetry, 2016)
- Kintsugi Tijela (novel, 2018)
References
edit- ^ a b c d e f "Senka Maric". MuseumsQuartier Wien. November 2016. Retrieved 2021-04-07.
- ^ a b c d "It's Good". Spirit of Bosnia. 9 (2). April 2014. ISSN 1931-4957. Retrieved 2021-04-07.
- ^ a b Fargo Cole, Isabel (2019-07-22). "30 Jahre Mauerfall: Schriftsteller schauen auf das Leben in geteilten Städten". Der Tagesspiegel (in German). Retrieved 2021-04-07.
- ^ a b c "Do smrti naredne". Tacno.net (in Bosnian). 2017-03-25. Retrieved 2021-04-07.
- ^ a b c d e Mattingly, Stacy (2020-07-30). "A New Generation of Writers in Bosnia and Herzegovina Narrates Life Beyond War". Literary Hub. Retrieved 2021-04-07.
- ^ "Senka Marić". Traduki. Retrieved 2021-04-07.
- ^ a b Raljević, Selma (2017). "A brief herstory of living and dying in a collection of poems Until the Next Death by Senka Marić". Kultura (157): 34–48. doi:10.5937/kultura1757034R. ISSN 0023-5164.
- ^ Bergelj, Vesna Hrdlička (2021-03-27). "Rekonstrukcija dojk kot luksuz". RTVSLO.si (in Slovenian). Retrieved 2021-04-07.
- ^ a b "Senka Marić". Reading Balkans. 2020-07-22. Retrieved 2021-04-07.
- ^ Raljevic, Selma (January 2018). "Women's literary experiment of Body Kintsugi by Senka Marić". Kultura (162): 284–305. doi:10.5937/kultura1962284R.
- ^ Peligra, Cristina (2019-06-05). "THE TRANSLATOR'S (INTER)VIEW. MIRZA PURIC ON UNDER PRESSURE". Inpress Books. Retrieved 2021-04-07.
- ^ Bayley, Sian (2021-12-21). "PEN Translates award winners from 15 countries revealed". The Bookseller. Retrieved 2022-07-26.
- ^ Schultermandl, Silvia; Rieser, Klaus (2021-03-17). Ethnicity and Kinship in North American and European Literatures. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-000-36312-8.