Anja Golob
area: Literature
Key Facts
nationality
Sloveniaarea
Literatureresidence
Prevaljerecommending institution
BMEIAtime period
September 2020 - September 2020Anja Golob (1976) has so far published four books of poetry in Slovene, one in German in collaboration with Nikolai Vogel, a reprint of the first three volumes in one book, and three translations (2 in German, 1 in Croatian), selections of poems and other texts in numerous magazines, and about 750 theatre critiques. Her 2nd and 3rd book were both awarded the Jenko Poetry Prize for best Slovene collection in past two years (2014 & 2016), her fourth book received the prize called kritiško sito (2020) for best Slovene book of 2019 by the Slovene Literary Critics Association.
Since January 2020 she appears regularly as a columnist in Studio City, a weekly show on national TV. She works as poet, writer and translator. In 2013 she co-founded a small publishing house VigeVageKnjige, where she’s now the editor-in-chief. It specialises in publishing Slovene translations of graphic novels for both children and adults.
After studying Philosophy and Comparative Literature at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana (Slovenia), she worked as a theatre critic for 12 years, mainly publishing in Večer, a Slovene daily. She occasionally still works as a dramaturg for contemporary art and dance performances. She is fluent in English and German, reasonably cool in BHS, and understands some French. She is a member of Mensa. She lives between Ljubljana and Brussels.
She is deeply thankful at least to Ágota Kristóf, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Alfred Hitchcock, Ernst Lubitsch, Tomas Tranströmer, Nelly Sachs, Sylvia Plath, Else Lasker-Schüler, Srečko Kosovel, Mark Strand, Vasko Popa, Dane Zajc, Mila Kačič, William Shakespeare, Tom Stoppard, Georg Büchner, Georges Bataille, Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka, Sapho, J. D. Salinger, J. M. Coetzee, Mary Wollstonecraft, Virginia Woolf, Rosa Luxemburg, Josef Koudelka, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Mapplethorpe, Vivien Maier, Baruch de Spinoza, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Zdravko Kobe, Mladen Dolar, la la la human steps, Radiohead, Raised by Swans, Explosions in the Sky, Wim Mertens, Tindersticks, Freddie Mercury, Aaron Swartz, Alan Turing, Ljuba Prenner, EKV, Pina Bausch, Käthe Kollwitz, Egon Schiele, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Georges Schwizgebel, Marko Jakše, Caster Semenya, Mukhtar Mai, Paradise Sorouri and Barbara Pušnik.
I am currently working on two translations (from german and english), writing my first theatre play and re-writing the first draft of a novel I wasn't entirely happy with. The nature of my work is, that I do several things spontanously, for which I need time and space, so I can devote myself completely to work. The residency offers this exactly. I also do hope, that being there will actually help with the re-writing since the mayor part of my novels take place in Vienna.
It is extremely important to me and my work. Also the residency gives me the chance to perform in Vienna again. I did this several times so far (Alte Schmiede in 2015 and 2019; ÖGL in 2015; Literaturhaus in 2014), but right now, my 4th poetry collection gets translated into german, so this is a great chance for me to read that material in public for the first time.