Julijana Matanović
Julijana Matanović (Gradačac, 1959) is a writer, literary critic and a university professor at the Department of Croatian Language and Literature at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. She graduated from the College of Education in Osijek and received her Doctorate at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb.
She debuted at the Croatian literary scene with a short story collection Why I Lied to You (1997), that was later published in fifteen reprints and awarded with the prestigious Josip and Ivan Kozarac prize. Literature itself is a leitmotif of the entire oeuvre of Julijana Matanović. Intertextuality and metafiction intertwine with autobiographical elements, blurring the lines between literature and life. Her most important works of fiction include A Note on the Author (2000), Like Father and Daughter (2003), Laura’s Not Just an Anecdote (2005), Who’s Afraid of the Character (2008), What Are You Talking About (2010). In 2009, she won the most important Croatian literary award, the Kiklop, for her novel Book of Women, Men, Cities and Goodbyes, and a second one followed in 2011 for her Young Adult title cowritten with Anka Dorić, They Think We’re Little.
Other than a prolific career of a fiction writer, Matanović is known for her many critical works on Croatian and World literature. Since 2014., she is a member of the Croatian Academy of Science and Art.