Iztok Osojnik is a Slovenia

Slovenia

Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...

n poet and essayist.

He was born in Ljubljana

Ljubljana

Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia and its largest city. It is the centre of the City Municipality of Ljubljana. It is located in the centre of the country in the Ljubljana Basin, and is a mid-sized city of some 270,000 inhabitants...

. He studied comparative literature at the University of Ljubljana

University of Ljubljana

The University of Ljubljana is the oldest and largest university in Slovenia. With 64,000 enrolled graduate and postgraduate students, it is among the largest universities in Europe.-Beginnings:...

 under the supervision of the famous literary historian and philosopher Dušan Pirjevec

Dušan Pirjevec

Dušan Pirjevec, known by his battle name Ahac , was a Slovenian resistance fighter, literary historian and philosopher...

. In his college years, he collaborated with the poet Jure Detela, with whom he published a Sub-real Manifesto and worked in the avantgarde group called Pisarna Aleph ("Office Aleph

Aleph

* Aleph or Alef is the first letter of the Semitic abjads descended from Proto-Canaanite, Arabic alphabet, Phoenician alphabet, Hebrew alphabet, Syriac alphabet-People:*Aleph , an Italo disco artist and alias of Dave Rodgers...

"). Between 1980 and 1982, he continued his postgraduate studies in Kansai Gaidai University

Kansai Gaidai University

, almost always abbreviated Kansai Gaidai , is located in Hirakata, Osaka, Japan. It is a private university focusing on foreign language studies. Kansai is the proper name of the large region where it is located, which includes the cities of Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe. Gaidai is a contraction of...

 in Osaka

Osaka

is a city in the Kansai region of Japan's main island of Honshu, a designated city under the Local Autonomy Law, the capital city of Osaka Prefecture and also the biggest part of Keihanshin area, which is represented by three major cities of Japan, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe...

, Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

. In 2000 he was the fellow of Cambridge Seminar on Contemporary English Writers, in 2001 the fellow of Goethe Institut in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

. Between 2002 and 2003 he visited the USA with a Fulbright Fellowship.

He wrote published several collection of poetry and received numerous awards. His poems were translated to English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

, Croatian

Croatian language

Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...

, Hungarian

Hungarian language

Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....

, Hebrew

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

, Macedonian

Macedonian language

Macedonian is a South Slavic language spoken as a first language by approximately 2–3 million people principally in the region of Macedonia but also in the Macedonian diaspora...

, Malay

Malay language

Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family. It is the official language of Malaysia , Indonesia , Brunei and Singapore...

, Lithuanian

Lithuanian language

Lithuanian is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognized as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.96 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 170,000 abroad. Lithuanian is a Baltic language, closely related to Latvian, although they...

, Polish

Polish language

Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...

, Portuguese

Portuguese language

Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

, and Romanian

Romanian language

Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...

.

He lives and works in Ljubljana.

Essential bibliography

• Sedem smehljajev na obrazu Mone Lize ("Seven Smiles on Mona Lisa's Face")
• Temni julij ("Dark July")
• Nekoč je bila Amerika ("Once upon a Time There Was America")
• Iz Novega sveta ("From the New World")
• Gospod Danes ("Mister Today")
• Zgodba o Dušanu Pirjevcu in meni ("The Story of Dušan Pirjevec and Myself")
• Spleen Berlina ("The Spleen of Berlin")

Works in English

• Alluminations (2000)
• And Some Things Happen for the first Time (2001)