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Biljana D. Obradoviċ, a Serbian-American poet, critic, translator, and Professor of English has lived in Yugoslavia, Greece, and India besides the United States.
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Early life
Obradoviċ was born on February 25, 1961 in Bitola, Macedonia of Serbian parents, Dragoslav and Vera Obradoviċ, who originally came from the area of Aleksinac, Serbia. Her father was a customs officer, then a diplomat. She learned English at the age of ten at Pinewood Schools of Thessaloniki in Salonika, Greece which she attended from grade five to nine. She moved to Belgrade, Serbia briefly then to Bombay,India where she attended Cathedral and John Connon School during high school. In 1980 she returned to Yugoslavia to pursue a B.A. in English language and literature at the Faculty of Philology of Belgrade University. In 1988 she moved to Richmond, Virginia for an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Virginia Commonwealth University which she received in 1991, after which she moved to Lincoln, Nebraska for a Ph.D. in English from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
Career
Obradoviċ, who considers herself a transnational writer, writes her poetry in English, but is fluent in Serbian, and has studied Modern Greek and French. Her first collection of poems, Frozen Embraces, a bilingual edition (Center of Emigrants from Serbia, Belgrade / Merrick, New York, Cross-Cultural Communications, 1997, 2000 ), won the Rastko Petrović Award for the Best Poem of 1997 and Best Book of 1998. Her second collection, Le Riche Monde, is also a bilingual edition (Raška Škola, Belgrade Merrick, New York, Cross-Cultural Communications, 1999). Her poems also appear in Three Poets in New Orleans (Xavier Review Press, New Orleans 2000). Her third collections of poems, Little Disruptions appeared in 2012 (Niš Cultural Center, Niš).
In addition to her own poetry, other works include her Serbian translations of John Gery's American Ghost: Selected Poems (Raška Škola, Belgrade/ Merrick, New York, Cross-Cultural Communications, 1999), Serbian translations of Stanley Kunitz, The Long Boat (co-published by Plato, Belgrade and Cross-Cultural Communications, Merrick, NY, 2007), and Fives: Fifty Poems by Serbian and American Poets, A Bilingual Anthology, as editor and translator (Co-published by Contact Line, Belgrade, and Cross-Cultural Communications, Merrick, NY, 2002), an English translation of Bratislav Milanović's, Doors in a Meadow (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2011), a translation of poems by Patrizia de Rachewiltz, Dear Friends (Književno Društvo Sveti Sava, 2012), and a translation of a selection of poems by Bruce Weigl, What Saves Us (Beogradska Knjiga 2013).
Obradović's work has appeared in such anthologies as Like Thunder: Poets Respond to Violence in America and Key West: A Collection, as well as Kletva [Curse].
She also reviews books for World Literature Today and others. She received the Masaryk Academy of Arts Medal for Artistic Achievements, October 20, 2000, Prague, Czech Republic, and is a member of the Association of Writers of Serbia. She is Professor of English at Xavier University of Louisiana, New Orleans, where she lives with her husband John Gery and son Petar.