(April 19, 2011) — Josip Novakovich, an award-winning author and fellow at the Hermitage Artist Retreat, will give a public lecture titled “Writing in English as a Stepmother Tongue” at New College of Florida’s Four Winds Café on Friday, April 22, from 7 to 9 pm. Novakovich’s talk will engage the issue of writers whose native language is not English and explore the author’s own experiences with writing in English rather than his native Croatian. He also will discuss the issue of linguistic migration in literature. The talk is free and open to the public.
Josip Novakovich (Croatian: Novaković) is a Croatian-American writer, whose grandparents immigrated from Croatia to Cleveland, Ohio, during the early part of the 20th century, only to return to their homeland (then Yugoslavia) following the First World War. Novakovich, who was born in 1956, grew up in the Central Croatian town of Daruvar and studied medicine at the University of Novi Sad before making his own trek across the Atlantic in the mid-1970s to continue his education at Vassar College (B.A.), Yale University (M.Div.) and the University of Texas, Austin (M.A.).
Since immigrating to the United States, Novakovich has published a novel (April Fool’s Day), three short story collections (Yolk, Salvation and Other Disasters and Infidelities: Stories of War and Lust), two collections of narrative essays (Apricots from Chernobyl and Plum Brandy: Croatian Journey) and a college-level textbook (Fiction Writer’s Workshop). His stories have appeared in many publications, including The Paris Review, TriQuarterly and Ploughshares.
Novakovich is the recipient of the Whiting Writer’s Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, an award from the Ingram Merrill Foundation and an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. He has received three Pushcart Prizes, an O. Henry Award and was anthologized in Best American Poetry.
In addition to writing, Novakovich is an accomplished teacher who has taught at Nebraska Indian Community College, Bard College, Moorhead State University, Antioch University Los Angeles, University of Cincinnati and Pennsylvania State University. He currently is in the process of moving to Montreal to teach at Concordia University.
New College’s Four Winds Café is located on the College’s Bayfront Campus on College Drive, just one block north of University Parkway off U.S. 41.
For more information on Josip Novakovich’s upcoming talk at New College of Florida, call the Office of Public Affairs at (941) 487-4153 or visit the Hermitage Artist Retreat website at: hermitageartistretreat.org.