Lili Potpara was born on 3 October 1965 in Maribor, Slovenia. She studied English and French at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, and graduated in English Translation Workshop in 1992. Potpara translates from Slovene into English, and from English, Serbian and Turkish into Slovene. During her career as free-lance translator she has translated works of Slovenian authors into English, including a number of Drago Jančar’s short stories collected in the book Joyce’s Pupil (Dublin: Brandon, 2006), and a vast volume of fiction works from English into Slovene published by major Slovenian publishing houses, among them Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (Cesta; Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, 2008), Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (Židovski policijski sindikat; Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, 2009) and Stuart Evers’ Ten Stories about Smoking (Deset zgodb o kajenju; Ljubljana: Modrijan, 2014) as well as non-fiction books, most notably Siddhartha’s Mukherjee’s Emperor of All Maladies (Kralj vseh bolezni; Ljubljana: Modrijan, 2012).
Her own short stories were published in two collections (Zgodbe na dušek; Ljubljana: LUD Literatura, 2002, and Prosim, preberi; Ljubljana: LUD Literatura, 2006). In English translation, her short pieces have appeared in World Literature Today and Fiction Southeast, among others, most recently in the anthology Flash Fiction International (New York, London: Norton, 2015, translation by Kristina Reardon).