Meta Kušar, Maja Vidmar, Erika Vouk

Meta Kušar was born in 1952 in Ljubljana. She is a poet and essayist, the author of six books of poetry: Madeira (in bilingual editions: Slovene-English and Slovene-Italian, 1993), Svila in Lan (Silk and Flax, 1997), Ljubljana (Ljubljana, 2004), Jaspis (Jasper, 2008), Vrt (Garden, 2014), winner of the Veronika Award for best poetry collection of the year, and Azur (Himmelblau, 2015), a Jenko Award nominee. Her poetry collection Ljubljana was published in Slovakia (Ars Publications, Bratislava, 2008) and in England by the Arc publishing house, with Polish and Serbian translations following in 2013. Meta is also the author of a book of interviews titled Intervju (Interview, 2009) and an essay book titled Kaj je poetično ali ura ilegale (What is Poetic or a Lesson in Illegality, 2011), winner of the Rožanc Award for best essay collection in 2012. Her work appears in various anthologies: Afterwards, Slovene Writing 1945 – 1995, The Fire Under the Moon; Contemporary Slovene Poetry, La voix dans le corps/The Voice in the Body/Glas v telesu, Les Poètes de la Méditerrané, Gallimard to name the major ones, and in numerous literary magazines. Since 1980 she has regularly contributed cultural and historical shows to the Slovene National Radio and the RAI-Trieste. On occasion, she writes film scripts and directs them. She also directed a musical performance of her poetry, The Throne of Poetry, staged internationally in Washington (1999), London (2000), and Lugano (2006). Recently she has authored and staged a number of multimedia literary events; the latest one dedicated to the poets who passed away in 2016 (Cankarjev dom, Ljubljana).

Maja Vidmar, born in 1961, is from Nova Gorica and lives in Ljubljana as a freelance poet. Her debut Razdalje telesa (Distances of the Body, 1984) sold fifteen hundred copies, stirring up much attention, among other traits for its refined eroticism. She has published seven poetry collections: besides the first one also Način vezave (Ways of Binding 1988), Ob vznožju (At the Base, 1998), Prisotnost (Presence, 2005), Sobe (Rooms, 2008), Kako se zaljubiš (How to Fall in Love, 2012), and Minute prednosti (Minutes of Advantage, 2015), as well as two books of selected poems Ihta smeri (Urge of Direction, 1989) and Petdeset pesmi (Fifty Poems, 2015). With her concise and to-the-point poetic language, Maja Vidmar  grants expression to everything she’s part of and everything that’s part of her. In the past few years, this has been organically complemented by her involvement with gestalt therapy, which serves as the guiding principle behind her poetry workshops.
Maja Vidmar’s book Presence was awarded the Jenko Prize as well as the Prešeren Foundation Award, bringing her the Vienna scholarship “Groβer Preis für Osteuropäische Literatur”. In 2007 she was awarded the Umberto Saba Award at the international poetry contest Trieste Scritture di Frontiera, and for the book Rooms received the prize of the Network of Literary Cities, Pazin, in 2009. Her recent decade of creativity earned her the distinguished Velenjica – Cup of Immortality in 2015. Maja Vidmar’s verse is widely translated, with seven of her poetry books appearing in foreign languages: Leibhaftige Gedichte (Droschel, 1999), for which she received the Hubert Burda Foundation Prize for young, Akt (Meandar, 1999), Molitva tijela (Prayer of the Body, Tugra, 2007), Gegenwart (Edition Korrespondenzen, 2007), Način vezivanja (Udruženje književnika Banja Luka, 2009), E il mondo si scolora (Ibiskos Editore, 2010), and Izby a ine basne (Studna, 2015). Many of her poems appear in Slovene and international literary anthologies.

Poet and translator Erika Vouk lives and works in Maribor. Her poetic oeuvre consists of eight poetry collections: The White Eurydice (1984), Anima (1990), The White Tree (2000), Description of a Painting (2002), Album (2003), Wave Motion (2004), Ruby (2008) and Lasa pur dir (2013). In 2007, her selected poems were published under the title A Hand Painting with the Swing of a Bird’s Wing. Erika Vouk authored a wealth of translation, especially in the domain of drama (Frank Wedekind, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Heiner Müller), with her foremost work being Goethe’s Faust: The Second Part of the Tragedy. Her poetry and youth literature translations appeared in a diverse range magazines and journals. In 2002 she became the Dame of Poetry at the European Poetry Tournament, as well as having received the Jenko Award for her poetry collection Description of a Painting, followed by the Veronika Award for the same piece in 2004. Erika is a recipient of the Glazer Award of the City of Maribor for lifetime achievement.