Janja Vidmar

Janja Vidmar is one of the most prominent and widely recognized Slovenian authors of youth literature. She was born in 1962 in Ptuj and studied at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana and later at the Faculty of Education in Maribor. By profession, she is a teacher of Slovene language and pedagogy.

She began her literary career in the early 1990s and is an active member of the Slovenian Writers’ Association. She co-founded its section for youth literature and initiated the Desetnica Award, which has been presented since 2004. As an independent cultural creator, she writes not only books for children and young adults, but also literature for adults, scripts for children’s TV series and feature films, as well as plays and radio dramas.

Her bibliography includes nearly 80 monographic publications in Slovenian, and her works have been translated into Croatian, German, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, and Italian. She primarily writes in genres such as the social-psychological novel, realistic adventure stories, children’s crime and horror fiction, and fantasy.

Through her storytelling, Vidmar addresses a range of important and often taboo social issues, including xenophobia, otherness, domestic violence, eating disorders, loneliness, and misunderstandings between young people and adults. Her engaging narrative style and strong thematic messages make her works appealing to both younger and adult readers.