Dubravka Ugresic, born in Kutina, Croatia, in 1949. M.A. from the University of Zagreb. Free-lance writer and author of several books: short stories, essays and novels, most of which have been translated into many languages. Award-winner of several international literary prizes.
Writer-in-residence(1 September 2002 – 30 June 2003)
During the academic year 2002/03 I completed, or almost completed, two of my projects. I gave a final shape to a volume of essays with a title ‘Turkish Pizza’. Some of those essays were written in 1998-99, for the column I wrote in the Swiss newspaper Die Welt Woche. Another part of the book is made up of more recent essays, three of which were written during my stay in NIAS. The title of the book introduces the dominant theme of the essays: the European human landscape and its rapid changes. I also worked on my new novel and managed to complete two thirds of it and hope to complete it by the beginning of September 2003.
I also participated in ‘public life’, when appropriate and useful. I participated in a public discussion on European migrations, in April, organised by Akademie Der Kunste in Berlin; then, in a seminar on European literatures held in Hamburg, in March; and, I gave a key-note speech at the seminar organised by ECF, in Amsterdam, on intercultural cooperation in Europe. All those events took place this year. During the academic year 2002/03, I published two longer essays in the Dutch newspaper, Vrij Nederland.