Additional information
by Marija Knezevic (Author), Sibelan Forrester (Translator)
One of Serbia's most important living writers, Marija Knezevic writes poems that often read as narratives, replete with characters, humor, pathos, and unexpected twists. Readers will meet a father and daughter frolicking on a Mediterranean beach during the continuing refugee crisis, or an Inca girl whose world will be destroyed by "milk-colored people," or a beloved worldly heiress who wears men's pajamas. Knezevic also writes more classical lyrics about love, relationships, writing (or the blocks to writing), and an ample range of other topics. Her work fearlessly and frequently addresses current events and social issues, both in urban Belgrade where she lives, and more global concerns.
Author Biography
Sibelan Forrester is Susan W. Lippincott Professor of Modern and Classical Languages and Russian at Swarthmore College. She has published translations of fiction, poetry and scholarly prose from Croatian, Russian and Serbian, including Elena Ignatova's bilingual book The Diving Bell (Zephyr Press, 2006), the selection of poems by Maria Stepanova in Relocations: Three Contemporary Russian Women Poets (ed. Catherine Ciepiela; Zephyr Press, 2013), and folktales in the volume Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales (University Press of Mississippi, 2013). Forrester won the 2014 AATSEEL Award for Best Scholarly Translation and twice (in 2006 and 2013) the Heldt Prize for Best Translation in Slavic/East European/Eurasian Women's Studies. Her scholarly interests include Russian poetry, folklore, translation studies, and women's and gender studies.
