The Leadership
Katja Stergar studied comparative literature at the University of Ljubljana. Since November 2022, she has been director of the Slovenian Book Agency, and since the establishment of the agency in 2009 and has been the head of international cooperations. She previously worked as a proofreader and editor, was also active as a literary critic and promoter of reading. Since 2010, she has been the representative of the agency in the Traduki network. From 2019 to 2022 she led the European project Every Story Matters in Slovenia, and from 2019 the project Slovenia as Guest of Honour at the Book Fair 2024 in Bologna.
Miha Kovač is a professor of publishing at the University of Ljubljana. Before turning to academia, he worked as a publisher for Slovenia’s two largest publishing houses and as editor-in- chief of the Slovenian edition of National Geographic Magazine. His last book in Slovenian, Berem, da se poberem (Read to Breathe) (Mladinska knjiga, 2021), has been translated into several languages, including Croatian, Lithuanian, Serbian, Spanish, Turkish and Azerbaijani. His works written in English include Never Mind the Web: Here Comes the Book (Chandos Publishing, 2008) and Is This a Book? co-authored with Angus Philips (Cambridge University Press, 2022). With Adriaan van der Weel, he co-edited Reading in Post-Textual Era, a special issue of First Monday on the differences between print and screen reading. He is co-author of the Ljubljana Reading Manifesto.
Matthias Göritz is a poet, translator and novelist. He has published four collections of poetry (Loops, Pools, Tools and Spools), four novels, including Der kurze Traum des Jakob Voss (The Short Dream of Jakob Voss) (Berlin Verlag, 2005), Parker (C.H. Beck, 2018) and Die Sprache der Sonne (The Language of the Sun) (C. H. Beck 2023), and three novellas. He teaches at Washington University in St. Louis and has translated works by John Ashbery, Rae Armantrout, Mary Jo Bang, Max Porter, Boris Pahor, Tomaž Šalamun and Aleš Šteger, among others. Göritz has received many awards, including the Hamburg Literature Prize, the Mara Cassens Prize, the Robert Gernhardt Prize, the William Gass Award and most recently the International Pretnar Award 2022. He has published 11 books, many of which have been translated into various languages, including English, Slovenian, Polish, Turkish, Belarusian and Uzbek. Translations of his poetry and prose have also appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals in more than 20 languages.
Amalija Maček works as a professor at the University of Ljubljana, where she teaches interpreting and translating from German into Slovenian. She is an accredited conference interpreter and literary translator (Ilse Aichinger, Marlen Haushofer, Franz Kafka, Bertolt Brecht, Peter Handke, Josef Winkler, Ulrich Peltzer, Terezia Mora, among others). Together with Erwin Köstler, she led two Vice Versa workshops and received the Fabjan Hafner Translation Award in 2021. Since the founding of the Slovenian Book Agency, she has been a member of the agency's international committee and strives to make Slovenian literature better known in German- speaking countries. She is a programme advisor for the Frankfurt 2023 project.
Bojana Čampa graduated from the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana, Department of History of Art and History. She has worked as a gallerist in private galleries for more than ten years. She has written numerous art reviews, curated exhibitions of contemporary art, and prepared and led author programmes related to local and foreign cultural heritage. In 2019 participated in the projects "European Funds Connect" (2020-2021) and "Fabiani Plečnik Vurnik - Forms for a New Democracy" (2019-2021). In 2022, she joined JAK as the project leader of the project "Slovenia, central guest of the Frankfurt International Book Fair - a model for the sustainable promotion of Slovenian literary creativity abroad".
Katja Kirbiš, within the project Slovenia: Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2023, covers activities in the field of public relations and marketing. She has experience in international financial and literary publishing, organisation of corporate events and editing marketing databases. She lived in England and Germany for 16 years, where she worked as a marketing consultant in B2B and B2C environments. She holds a Master's degree in Political Science, in the field of political rhetoric and political campaigns.
Mateja Humar Jelnikar is responsible for organising events and managing public cultural calls for proposals within the Slovenia - Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt International Book Fair 2023 project. She is an economist and sociologist by training. She has many years of experience in marketing for international companies.
Peter Koritnik, as part of the Slovenia, Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt International Book Fair 2023 project, covers the areas of tenders and event organisation, and is responsible for the preparation of various accompanying materials and printed materials. He is a qualified librarian and IT specialist. He is currently working on his Master's thesis in the field of publishing, which also concerns his work at the Slovenian Book Agency. Books are an important part of both his professional and private life.
Dr. Urban Šrimpf is a translator, university lecturer, assistant at the Department of Translation at the Faculty of Arts Ljubljana and coordinator of cultural programs at Goethe-Institut Ljubljana, where he is engaged in cultural management and promotes intensive cultural exchange. As part of Slovenia's appearance as Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair, he is heading the Liaison Office in Frankfurt. He also studied philosophy and comparative literature. He is interested in a variety of topics: from technical terminology to the Enlightenment, from the history of Slovenian literature, theatre and translation to the opus of Linhart and Prešeren, from German classical philosophy to questions about the role of art in society.
Sabina Tavčar is a cultural producer with several years of experience in managing international projects in publishing. She graduated in Social Informatics and then continued her studies in publishing. Between 2017 and 2018, she coordinated the Night of the Book project and the Sanje Literary Festival under the auspices of the Sanje Publishing House, and then worked for five years at Beletrina as the executive producer of the Days of Poetry and Wine festival and the coordinator of the European poetry platform Versopolis. She joined the Slovenian Book Agency in December 2022, where she is working on the Slovenia - Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt International Book Fair 2023 project.
Maruša Trobec is a graduate of cultural studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana, where she completed her studies with a thesis in cultural anthropology. During her studies, she was involved in the promotion of the Ljubljana Jazz Festival, the Liffe Film Festival and the current international activities of the Cankarjev dom, while at the Frankfurt Project she is in charge of administration.
In partnership with:
Dr Asta Vrečko is an assistant professor and research fellow at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, where she obtained her doctorate in 2014 from the Department of Art History. She has more than ten years of experience in higher education institutions in culture and art. Her research and scientific work focuses on Slovenian and Yugoslavian art of the 20th century, with an emphasis on the organisation of artists, the history of exhibitions, and the cultural policy in the period of the two Yugoslavias, as well as concentration camp art. Vrečko has also been active as an art critic, cooperated with non-governmental organisations, and participated in several exhibitions and large projects organised by the main Slovenian cultural institutions and abroad, including the National Modern Art Museum in Zagreb. As a member of the curatorial team, she represented the Republic of Slovenia at the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2021. Between 2018 and 2022, she was a municipal councillor for the Levica political party at the Municipality of Ljubljana, and a member of several municipal committees and cultural institution councils.
Barbara Koželj Podlogar studied History of Art and Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, and she published several recensions and critiques in various different newspapers and on the Slovenian National Radio. Since 2000, she has worked at the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia in various positions and areas of expertise. Between 2007 and 2013 she was a Director General of the Directorate for Art.
She has led coordination group for presenting Slovenian creativity abroad and was responsible for presenting Slovenian literature at book fairs in Prague, Leipzig and Frankfurt. She has been actively involved in establishing Slovenian Book Agency and was also the first president of Slovenian Book Agency Board for a period of four years. Between 2012 and 2015 she was a representative of the Open Method of Coordination group at the European Commission in the field of Cultural and Creative industries. Between 2013 and 2015 she was also the Head of Office for European Affairs and International Cooperation at the Ministry of Culture.
From August 2015 to August 2021, she was Head of the Slovenian Cultural Information Centre SKICA in Vienna. After her return from Vienna, she took up the position of Director General of the Directorate for Creativity at the Ministry of Culture.
Dr Ana Polak Petrič is Ambassador of the Republic of Slovenia to Germany, having previously served in the same capacity in Japan, and non-resident in Korea and the Philippines. She is a career diplomat, since 2003 employed at the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, with a special interest in international, European and human rights law. For several years, she was a High Representative of the Republic of Slovenia for Succession Issues to the former Yugoslavia. She holds a PhD in Law and is Assistant Professor of International Law, Diplomacy and European Law at New University. She also studied at the Diplomatic Academy and the University of Vienna. She is the editor-in-chief of the International Law Series and author of publications and articles in the field of international law and human rights.
The project »Slovenia, osrednja gostja mednarodnega knjižnega sejma v Frankfurtu 2023 - model trajnega uveljavljanja slovenske literarne ustvarjalnosti v tujini« is co-financed by the Republic of Slovenia and the European Union from the European Regional Development Fund.