In this series, Women’s Writes sits down and chats with some of the female winners of the European Union Prize for Literature. We talk about all things writing, from where to get started, to what it is like to have a book published, to what it means to be a female writer.
We are really excited to present winners of the European Union Prize for Literature (EUPL) Maša Kolanović, the 2020 laureate from Croatia, and Jan Carson, the 2019 laureate from Ireland.
Maša Kolanović (born in Zagreb, 1979) works as an associate professor in the Department of Croatian Studies at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb. She graduated from the same faculty with a degree in Croatian language and comparative literature and a PhD. So far, she has published a number of articles on literature and popular culture, as well as the following novels: Sloboština Barbie (V.B.Z., Zagreb, 2008; translated into German as Underground Barbie, Prospero Verlag, Berlin-Münster, 2012) and Poštovani kukci i druge jezive priče (Dear Insects and Other Scary Stories, Profil knjiga d.o.o., Zagreb, 2019). She has also published two poetry books, Pijavice za usamljene (Leeches for the Lonely, Student Center, Zagreb, 2001) and Jamerika (Algoritam, Zagreb, 2013), and one monograph, Udarnik! Buntovnik? Potrošač… (Striker! Rebel? Consumer…, Naklada Ljevak, Zagreb, 2011), and has also edited Komparativni postsocijalizam: slavenska iskustva (Comparative Postsocialism: Slavic Experiences, Zagreb, Slavic School and FF Press, Zagreb, 2013) and The Cultural Life of Capitalism in Yugoslavia (with D. Jelača and D. Lugarić, Palgrave Macmillan, New York and London, 2017).
Jan Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based in Belfast. Her first novel, Malcolm Orange Disappears was published by Liberties Press in 2014 to critical acclaim, followed by a short story collection, Children’s Children in 2016, and a flash fiction anthology, Postcard Stories (2017): every day in 2015 Jan Carson wrote a short story on the back of a postcard and mailed it to a friend. Each of these tiny stories was inspired by an event, an overheard conversation, a piece of art or just a fleeting glance of something worth thinking about further. The success of this collection lead to Jan Carson becoming the Irish Writers Centre’s first Roaming Writer-In-Residence, 2018, working with aspirant authors who also created ‘postcard stories’.
Published in journals such as Storm Cellar, Banshee, Harper’s Bazaar and The Honest Ulsterman, Jan Carson received an Arts Council NI Artist’s Career Enhancement Bursary in 2014. She was longlisted for the Sean O’Faolain short story prize in 2015 and won the Harper’s Bazaar short story competition in 2016. In 2014/15, she collaborated with local songwriter Hannah McPhillimy to produce an EP of songs based on her first novel. Hannah and Jan performed this material at music and literary festivals throughout Europe.
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