Lidija Dimkovska

Poet, novelist, and translator Lidija Dimkovska was born in 1971 in Skopje, North Macedonia. She took a Ph.D. degree in Romanian poetry at the University of Bucharest, Romania where she worked as lecturer of Macedonian language and literature. Now she lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia and translates Romanian and Slovenian literature in Macedonian. In her native, Macedonian language she has published seven books of poetry, four novels, one American diary, and one short stories collection. She edited an anthology of young Macedonian poetry, an anthology of contemporary Slovenian poetry in Macedonian, and two anthologies of contemporary minority and immigrant writing in Slovenia. Between 2016 and 2019 she served as the president of the jury for the international literary prize “Vilenica” in Slovenia and between 2013 and 2016 she was a member of the international jury for the international poetry award for life achievement “Herbert'' in Warsaw, Poland. Currently, she is a member of the International jury for the European Award for Poetry Petru Krdu, Vrsac, Serbia. She has participated at numerous international literary festivals and readings and was a writer-in-residence in Iowa, London, Berlin, Vienna, Graz, Salzburg, Bucharest, Krems, Tirana, Okinawa, and Split. Poems, excerpts from her novels, essays, short stories, interviews and reviews about her books appeared in,  among others: Times Literary Supplement, American Poetry Review, World Literature Today, The Rumpus, Tin House, the Paris Review, the Literary Hub, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Zeit, Foreword, The White Review, Asymptote, Publishers Weekly, BBC World Service, Words Without Borders, Columbia Journal, Los Angeles Review,  Boston Review, Poetry International, Plume, New Humanist, etc. Her books have been translated into 16 languages (English, German, Polish, Hungarian, Slovak, Czech, Romanian, Serbian, Slovenian, French, Croatian, Italian, Albanian, Bulgarian, Greek and Latvian).

List of books published:

Poetry:

1. The Offspring of the East (1992, together with Boris Cavkoski)
2. The Fire of Letters (1994),
3. Bitten Nails (1998),
4. Nobel vs. Nobel (2001
5. Ideal Weight (selected poetry in Macedonian, edition “130 books of Macedonian literature,”2008),
6. pH Neutral for Life and Death (2009)
7. Black on White (2016)
8. Boundary Situation (2021)

Novels:

1. Hidden Camera (2004)
2. A Spare Life (2012)
3. Non-Oui (2016)
4. Personal Identification Number (2023)

Diary:

1.  Beyond L. (2017)

Short stories collection:

1. When I left Karl Liebknecht (2019)

 

Awarded with:

(for poetry):

• The Macedonian award for poetry debut (1993),
• the German poetry prize »Hubert Burda« (2009),
• the Romanian poetry prizes “Poesis”(2002) and “Tudor Arghezi” (2012),
• the European Prize for Poetry “Petru Krdu” (2016)
• the Slovenian award “The Cup of Immortality” (2020)
• the Macedonian-Albanian award “Naim Frasheri”(2020)
• the Macedonian award “Brothers Miladinov” (2021)
• shortlisted for the American Best Translated Book Award (2013)
• shortlisted for the German literary prize »Brucke Berlin« (2013)
• shortlisted for the Polish award “European Poet of Freedom” (2016)
• shortlisted for the Slovenian prize MIRA, Slovenian PEN Center (2022)

(for prose):

• the award of Writers’ Association of Macedonia for the best prose book of the year, twice, for her novels Hidden Camera (2005) and A Spare Life (2013)
• the European Union Prize for Literature for her novel A Spare Life (2013)
• Special mention for European Cultural Heritage, for the cycle of five short stories from her book of short stories “When I Left Karl Liebknecht” (2018)
• nominated for the Swiss Award "Specimen" for best short story
• shortlisted for the International literary award Balkanika for her novel Grandma Non-Oui (2017)
• nominated for the Macedonian award Novel of the Year (2024)