ALEŠ ŠTEGER

Aleš Šteger was born in 1973 in Ptuj and lives in Ljubljana. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, novels and essays, as well as several books for young readers. He also works as an editor and translator and organizes artistic and cultural events. He is one of the most widely translated Slovenian authors. His work has been published in internationally renowned magazines and newspapers such as The New Yorker, Boston Review, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, TLS and Lettre International. In 2016, the Bavarian Academy of Arts awarded him the prestigious Horst Bienek Prize for Poetry, describing him as “one of the most original European poets writing today.” He translates from German and Spanish.

Šteger’s work encompasses various forms of artistic expression. In 2017, his large-scale installation Pyramid of Exiled Poets was presented at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale of Art in India. He has written librettos for composers Uroš Rojko and Vito Žuraj, and collaborated with Austrian double bassist Peter N. Gruber, the group Godalika and accordionist Jure Tori. He has also collaborated with visual artist Dušan Fišer and written texts for Peter Zak’s documentary Beyond Boundaries.

In 2012, he launched a project entitled Written on Site. Every year, he gives performances in different locations around the world. The first Written on Site performance took place in Ljubljana, followed by performances in Fukushima (Japan), Mexico City (Mexico), Belgrade (Serbia), Kochi (India), Solovki (Russia), Shanghai (China), Bautzen (Germany), Santiago de Compostela (Spain) and the Strait of Magellan (Chile).

He has received numerous national and international awards and distinctions, including the Slovenian Book Fair Award for Best First Book in 1996, the Veronika Award for Best Poetry Collection in 1998, the Rožanc Award for Best Essay Collection in 2007, the Prešeren Foundation Award in 2021, the International Literary Sceptre Award, presented by the Writers’ Association of Macedonia, in 2006, the Best Translated Book Award in the United States in 2011 and the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages Award in 2011, the Horst Bienek Prize in 2016, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the City of Ptuj in 2017, and the Alfred Kolleritsch Award of the City of Graz in 2021.

He has received numerous international fellowships, including those from Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart (2001), the Abraham Voursell Foundation in the United States (2002), the DAAD Künstler programme (2004), Récollets Paris (2009), Aargauer Literaturhaus Lenzburg (2013), Villa Marguerite Yourcenar and Saint-Jans-Cappel in France (2015), and the Landis & Gir Stiftung fellowship in Zug, Switzerland (2021 and 2022).

He was awarded the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French state. He is a member of the Berlin Academy of Arts and the German Academy for Language and Literature, a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Arts, and a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz, Germany.