Ivona Březinová

Biography

She was born in Ústí nad Labem, North Bohemia. Ivona attended gymnasium in Ústí nad Labem. Then she studied at the faculty of education of Jan Evangelista Purkyně University (former name of the Masaryk University), field of study – history and Czech language. After she graduated from University, she started a career in Czech studies department of Jan Purkyně University, where she worked as an assistant. One year later, she gained a doctorate of educational science for Czech language and literature. Ivona worked a few more years as a professional assistant and she devoted these years mainly to Czech literature of 19th and early 20th century. During this time, she published expert articles for newspapers. She soon directed her attentions to literature for children and young people.

Later she married and moved to Prague. Březinová has two daughters, Tereza and Veronika. After her maternity break, she started writing books for children and young people. She started her career as a writer in 1996 by publishing her first book. Her first book was The mirror for Marketa (Zrcátko pro Markétu). Her work covers fiction for young people as well as for older readers and stories for radio. She has written more than 30 books.

Březinová leads courses of creative writing at literature academy in Prague. She develops her editorial activity in connection with these courses. She often goes on talk shows and authors' readings. She has attended hundreds of talk shows all over the Czech Republic and Slovakia. She also organized the creation of the Besedník programme. She has been a member of IBBY since 1982 and a member of Writers’ community (Obec spisovatelů) since 1999. Since 2007 she has led creative group "Hlava nehlava", where she works as an editor of short stories collections. Brezinová has received many national prizes and has become an important writer for children and young people in the Czech Republic.

Prizes

She was knighted of Honor of beautiful word and many prizes and nominations from Golden Ribbon (Zlatá stuha), Knag (Suk) and Prize of Publishing house Albatros (Cena nakladatelství Albatros).

Translations

Her books were translated into English, German, French, Croatian, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Serbian and Sorbian.

Publications

Her "break-through" was in 1996 with The mirror for Marketa. Another book was three years later called Laura, what a tomboy you are! (Lauro, ty jsi ale číslo!). Then one year later, in 2000, she wrote Lufťačky. One of the most known books she has ever written is called My name is Alice (Jmenuji se Alice). It is the first book from the trilogy Girls on rein (Holky na vodítku) about girls with physical problems. The book was followed by My name is Ester (Jmenuji se Ester) and My name is Martina (Jmenuji se Martina). Alice was drugs addicted, Ester was a gambler and Martina was chronic bulimic. Until that time, she wrote for kids, by these books she had come to the attention of teenagers too. Other known books are Bara, do not cry! (Báro, nebreč!) and Poet in backpack (Básník v báglu). Her last known book is called Saxana and lexicon of spells (Saxana a lexikon kouzel), which is based on same-named film. In 2015 she came back to books for the little ones and wrote Thrunk here, thrunk there (Chobotem sem, chobotem tam).