Milena Benini, the acclaimed translator and author, passed away

05/06/2020

After a short and serious illness, Milena Benini, the acclaimed Croatian author and translator, passed away at the age of 54.

Milena Benini was born in Zagreb in 1966. Upon graduating at the classical gymnasium in Zagreb, she studied French language and Literature, Comparative Literature and Journalism at the University of Zagreb, and she graduated in Comparative Literature at the Oxford’s St. George University.

She started writing in elementary school, publishing her first short story in Sirius magazine at the age of 14. Her stories and articles were published in Sirius, Vijenac, Zarez, Ubiq, to name few of them, while her English works were featured in the magazines Neverworlds, Eternity and 69 Flavor of Paranoia.

During her long translating career, she translated the woks of Michel Houellebecq, Boris Vian, Jules Verne, Michael Moorcocka Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, Thomas de Quincy, Stephen King, Norman Mailer and many others. 

She's the author of 9 novels, among which the praised Priestess of the Moon and Venetian Falcon, the novella McGuffin Link; her works appeared in the antholohies Salacious Tales and Kontakt: An Anthology of Croatian SF and she co-authored two SF handbooks, The Complete Guide to Writing Fantasy and The Complete Guide to Writing Science.

“I write speculative fiction because I find it interesting, to quote Gibson, it's 'literary pop', and that always means a reflection of social dynamics, a space that is seemingly harmless but often more subversive than the so-called 'high literature'.”


The complete works and by Milena Benini can be found on her author's profile.