Mojca Kumerdej (1964), writer, philosopher and critic, was born in Ljubljana where she studied philosophy. Her literature is set in various social contexts and time periods, but the main themes revolve around the relationship between the individual and the collective, caught in the dialectics of desire and pleasure, and various forms of violence at an individual and systemic level that are conveyed with a critical sharpness and in places with irony. She has received numerous awards for her work, among them the Prešeren Fund Award and the Kritiško Sito Award for her novel Kronosova žetev (The Harvest of Chronos) (Beletrina, 2016), the Cankar Award for her collection of short stories Gluha soba (The Anechoic Chamber) (Goga, 2022), the Kočićevo Pero Award for the Serbian edition of her collection Temna snov (Dark Matter, Tamna materija, Geopoetika, 2015) and the Crystal Vilenica Award for her story Pod gladino (Under the Surface). Her work is included in numerous Slovene and foreign anthologies. Among other translations, Wallstein Verlag has published the German translations of Kronosova žetev and an anthology of her short prose. As a freelance writer and publicist, she writes about art, science and culture, and has collaborated as a dramaturge in theatre and dance performances.