Anja Štefan

ANJA ŠTEFAN (1969, Šempeter pri Gorici) is a Slovene poet, writer and storyteller. She graduated with degrees in Slovene and English Studies from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ljubljana and holds a Master’s degree in Folklore Studies. She works as a freelance artist. She writes poems, fairy tales, and riddles and also presents her texts in plays and literary performances. She is the pioneer of professional storytelling in Slovenia (since 1995) and the founder of the storytelling festival “Fairy Tales Today” (1998), which she ran for two decades. She is involved in researching the Slovene storytelling tradition, especially the one collected by Milko Matičetov. Anja Štefan has brought many folk tales to life through her publications in the children’s magazines Ciciban and Cicido, and through picture books and book selections. In 2019, on the 100^th anniversary of Matičetov’s birthday, she published the anthology Three Hundred Hares (Tristo zajcev): the most beautiful Slovene folk tales from the estate of Milko Matičetov. In 2010, she authored the first thorough monographic presentation of another folk teller and his repertoire in the book Anton Dremelj – Resnik. Together with the best Slovene illustrators, she has published a number of original picture books and won numerous awards like Levstikova nagrada, Rastem s knjigo, Ljubljana bere, večernica etc. In 2022, Anja Štefan was also the first Slovene writer of children’s and youth literature to receive the Prešeren Fund Award (nagrada Prešernovega sklada), Slovenia’s central prize in the arts.