26 October 2023 at 6pm Barbican Library
Silk Street, Barbican
London EC2Y 8DS

You are cordially invited to join an evening of literature from Slovenia, the Guest of Honour at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair. Writer and translator Erica Johnson Debeljak and Lukas Debeljak, poet and translator, will talk about the joint creative process of translating the book Machine, Do You Know Your Duty? by Slovenian author Esad Babačić. In discussion with Dr Karen Saego, they will also share their insights and perspectives on writing their own work.

REGISTER or email rsvp.vlo@gov.si

Erica Johnson Debeljak (1961, San Francisco) received degrees from Columbia and New York University. In 1993 she moved to Slovenia to marry the poet Aleš Debeljak. Her first book, Foreigner in the House of Natives, was published in 1999. In the decades that followed, she wrote many books in a range of genres, including the popular memoir Forbidden Bread in 2010. In 2018, she co-edited the book Just Passing Through: Postcards of Aleš Debeljak, a unique tribute in postcards to her husband, who died in 2016. Her most recent book Virgin, Wife, Widow, Whore published in 2021, became an instant bestseller and won the Book of the Year Award at the 37th Slovenian Bookfair. She writes in English and her work is translated into Slovenian, German, Croatian, and Serbian.

Lukas Debeljak (1999) studied in California and in Berlin. His poetry has been published in magazines in Slovenia (Dialogi, Idiot, Literatura, Zamenjave) and abroad (Enklava, Slavicum Press, Rukopisi), and translated into English, Czech, Serbian, Spanish, and other languages. In 2022, he published his debut poetry collection To Know Like Water. He translates contemporary Slovenian poetry and theory. He lives and works in Berlin and Ljubljana.

The event is organized in cooperation with the Barbican Library and the Slovene Writers’ Association. With the support of the European Union and the Slovenian Book Agency.
Co-founded by the Cultural Fund run jointly by the Slovenian Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs and aimed at promoting Slovenian culture abroad.