Monika Herceg | |
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 Monika receiving the "Fierce Women" Award in 2021, photographed by Nina Đurđević. | |
| Born | 1990 (age 34–35) |
| Alma mater | University of Rijeka |
| Occupations |
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Monika Herceg is a Croatian poet, playwright, editor, essayist and feminist from Croatia. [1] Her poems have been translated into more than twenty languages, including French, German, English and Lithuanian, [2] and she has received more then twenty awards for her work. [3] [4] [5]
Herceg was born in Sisak in 1990, and grew up in a village near the city. [3] [6] Her hometown was not far from the northern edge of the Republic of Serbian Krajina, an unrecognized Serb quasi-state that was active during the Croatian War of Independence. [6] [7] Herceg's formative years were therefore spent in the proximity of a war zone, which has influenced her work as an adult. [6] She has spent more then ten years in exile.
As a youth, Herceg felt "cut off from the rest of the world" due to her village's remote location. [6] Her relatives were not habitual readers; she has described having no books in her house while growing up, but she was able to access reading materials with the help of her schoolteachers. [8]
Herceg began writing poetry while studying physics, financing her studies by working several jobs. [8] One of these positions was hosting a student radio program named "Science on the Air," which communicated complex scientific topics to a wider audience. [9]
Herceg first received recognition in 2017, when she won the Goran for Young Poets Award for her book Početne koordinate (Initial Coordinates). [10] Told in the voice of Herceg's grandmother, Initial Coordinates portrays the experiences of impoverished women in twentieth-century rural Croatia. [8] The following year, Herceg won the Kvirin Award for Young Poets [11] and the Fran Galović Prize. [12]
At the 2019 Struga Poetry Evenings festival in Macedonia, Herceg was recognised as that year's Bridges of Struga Laureate. [10] Later in the year, she became a member of Versopolis, [13] a poetry platform supported by the European Union's Creative Europe Program that works to promote poets from the continent. [14]
Herceg believes that making science accessible to the masses is important to combat misinformation, [9] and she often incorporates scientific concepts and thoughts into her creative work. [8] [15]
Herceg has criticised the anti-vaccination movement and creationism, describing them as anti-scientific and harmful to social progress. [9] She has participated as a volunteer in hosting science workshops for children. [9] Herceg has described Vera Rubin as her scientific hero. [15]
Herceg is a feminist, which has influenced her body of work. [16] Her 2020 play, Where Tenderness is Brought, was written to bring attention to the matter of violence against women and intergenerational trauma. [16] This work received the Croatian National Theatre Award for the best new play. [16] The next year, she was awarded by the Fierce Women project, a beneficiary of the European Social Fund, [17] for her activism. [16]
Herceg is a member of the Croatian P.E.N Centre, an arm of the international writers' association, PEN International. [18] The Centre's work concerns defending freedom of speech and advancing human rights through journalism and publishing. [19] In May 2025, Herceg signed a statement in her role as a member of the Centre extending support for then-ongoing student protests in Serbia. [20]
In 2020, she attended a commemoration of the 1991 murder of the Zec family organised by the Anti-Fascist League of Croatia, where she read verses. [21]
While accepting the Gdańsk Literary Award at the European Poet of Freedom Festival in 2024, Herceg drew awareness to the European migrant crisis, the death tolls of the Russo-Ukrainian War and Genocide in Gaza, and abortion rights in Europe. [22]
Herceg lives and works as an editor in Zagreb, and is a mother to two children. She is a member of the Croatian Writers Society, having served on the editorial board of its magazine since 2021. [23]
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