Making Literature Travel

Kristina Kočan, (1981)  Poet and translator. PhD in contemporary American poetry at the Faculty of Arts, University of Maribor. Published four poetry collections: Selišča (Migratory Places, Litera, 2021), Šivje (Stitchery, Litera, 2018), Kolesa in murve (Bicycles and Mulberries, Zavod Itadakimasu, 2014), and Šara (Stuff, Litera, 2008), which was nominated for the Best Début Book Award. The end of 2018 saw the publication of her multimedia book s|prehod(pro|menade, Litera), which contains a selection of her poems, audio recordings of her poems set to music, and photos by Bojan Atanaskovič. The year 2019 brought her short fiction début, Divjad (Wild Game). Her poetry is translated into more than 10 languages and included in international anthologies, such as Europe in Poems: The Versopolis Anthology and Other Words/Druge besede. Moreover, it is part of the international poetry platform Versopolis. Kočan’s translation work focuses on American authors. In 2021 she selected, translated and edited an anthology of contemporary Native American short fiction, Po toku navzgor (Upstream), featuring 21 Native American writers. As a songwriter she works with the Slovenian ensemble Brest, which has already published two acclaimed albums.