Antonela Marušić
area: Literature
Key Facts
nationality
Croatioaarea
Literatureresidence
Zagrebrecommending institution
BMEIAtime period
June 2017 - June 2017Antonela Marušić (pen name: Nora Verde) was born in Dubrovnik (Croatia) in 1974. Holds a BA in Croatian Language and Literature.
Verde is Croatian fiction writer, journalist and feminist. Since 1998 she works as a journalist and editor in daily and weekly press and nonprofit media in the sectors of culture, music, television, human rights, and independent media.
Currently she is engaged as an editor on the Croatian feminist site Vox Feminae. She was one of the founded members of that site and last five years working as a member of the editorial board. Vox Feminae platform is a space of gender and media culture which acts as a platform of voices. The articles include views, reviews and comments on the cultural and social events and phenomena, relevant and up to date news and commentary on culture, politics and the media, interviews and conversations with female artists, theorists, activists, entrepreneurs and all those whose work is essential to make more visible.
As a fiction writer Nora Verde is the author of the novels Posudi mi smajl, 2010. Meandar, (Lend Me Your Smile), Do isteka zaliha, 2013, Sandorf (Until the Supplies Run Out) and the story collection O ljubavi, batinama i revoluciji (On Love, Beatings & Revolution), Sandorf 2016.
Her short stories were included in an anthology of lesbian fiction entitled Pristojan život (lezbejske kratke priče s prostora Ex Yu) (2012) and Zagreb Noir (2014), which was translated into English and published in November 2015 in the US. Novel Until the Supplies Run Out is translated in Slovenian and published at Založba Littera, Maribor in 2015. Her poetry and fiction are also translated in Macedonian and Albanian.
She is the member of Croatian Writers Association, and Croatian Community of Freelance Artists.
<link http: www.hrvatskodrustvopisaca.hr hr clan antonela-marusic-271 external-link-new-window externen link in neuem>www.hrvatskodrustvopisaca.hr/hr/clan/antonela-marusic-271
Following the publication of my third book – a short story collection entitled "On Love, Beatings and the Revolution" – I've been trying to find a place where I could work undisturbedly on a novel inspired by the childhood of a young girl from Dalmatia who is growing up in the cruel, patriarchal environment on one of the Croatian islands, and her relationship with her grandmother. The novel's narrator is reminiscing over her granny's stories from early childhood and youth, the historical circumstances of the disintegration of Austria-Hungary, and the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In this documentary-fictional novel I particularly want to accentuate the granny's participation in the refugee flight to the Egyptian camp El Shatt, in which thousands of refugees from the former Yugoslavia are staying in the midst of World War II, but also the post-war period of the 1950s and 1960s. Through stories and reminiscences she recounts to her granddaughter, the granny is trying to preserve the memory of the individual and collective history of the island where she spent nearly all her entire lifetime, struggling to survive in this impoverished and patriarchal community.
This novel in the making is simultaneously a story of the young girl's resistance and conflict with her abusive and authoritarian uncle who is trying to subject her to his rules and to his rigid value system.
The manuscript of the novel with the working title "Letu danci kao sanci" (eng. Days Fly like Dreams Gone By) is currently in the stage of the first draft, so the intricate work of fleshing out the narrative structure and language and style is still ahead of me.
As a writer from Central and Southeast Europe, but also a reader, I have a sense that in Croatian and Slavic literatures not nearly enough space has been devoted to the lives of women in the Mediterranean, particularly in insular family communities, told in their authentic voices.
Considering that through my editorial and journalistic work for the online magazine Vox Feminae I engage in activism and cultural analysis, for the duration of the residency I would also enjoy meeting representatives of local feminist and leftist organizations and grassroots groups in Vienna in order to exchange our knowledge and experience in the field of cultural activism and advocacy strategies.