Authors

Renato Baretić (Zagreb, 1963) is a journalist and writer. He has an incomplete degree in Comparative Literature and Phonetics at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb, having also briefly studied political sciences and journalism. Baretić used to work as a warehouse assistant, assistant repairman of household appliances, assistant tile-layer, sales agent, street stall seller and worker in a factory of textile machines.

He periodically works as a film and TV scriptwriter, copywriter, journalist and author of questions for the most popular Croatian TV quiz shows. Co-founder and art director of the storytelling festival Pričigin in Split and former leader of the movement for cultural revival of Croatian islands. Since 2014, instructor of creative writing in the Split-based “House of Creative Writing” and also throughout Croatia, from high schools to prisons. Member of the Croatian Journalists Association, Croatian PEN Centre and Croatian Writers’ Association, he attended literary residency programs in Belgium, Austria, Turkey, Germany, North Macedonia, and Slovenia.

Baretić was a co-screenwriter of the successful Croatian TV series Black & White World and The Diary of the Great Perica. His illustrated children’s fiction Little Wolf’s Trouble has been adapted for theatre (2017, The Mala Scena Theatre, Zagreb, directed by Morana Dolenc) and won several awards, while his stage play Rejected performed 180 times in two years. Croatian Radiotelevision adapted two of his novels into radio-drama: Tell Me About Her (2019, directed by Petar Vujačić) and Last Hand (2022, directed by Hana Veček).

Baretić’s novel Eighth Commissioner won five major national prizes for fiction: Kiklop, August Senoa, Ivan Goran Kovacic, Vladimir Nazor, Ksaver Sandor Gjalski. French translation, by Chloé Billon, was awarded INALCO Institute in Paris Readers’ Prize 2017 and shortlisted for the Féstival des Littératures Européennes Award in Cognac. Eighth Commissioner also received two theatrical adaptations: Croatian National Theatre Split in 2005 (directed by Ivica Kunčević), and Gavella Theatre Zagreb in 2013 (directed by Saša Anočić). A movie adaptation (2018, directed by Ivan Salaj) won several national and regional awards, including one for the best screenplay at FEST in Belgrade, and was a Croatian candidate for OSCAR in Best Foreign Language Category.

His works have been translated into Albanian, English, French, German, Macedonian, Russian, Slovenian, and Ukrainian.