Urban Vovk was born in 1971 in Kranj, Slovenia. He graduated in philosophy from the University of Ljubljana’s Faculty of Arts. He was employed as a high school teacher for some time. Between 2000 and 2012 he worked as a freelance writer, editor, translator and literary critic. For a while, from 2012 till 2014, he was employed at the Ljubljana City Library (Programme Director at the Trubarjeva hiša literature). In 2002 he published his first book of essay, V teku časa, which received the Stritarjeva nagrada, the Slovenian Writers’ Association award for most promising critic, in the same year. At the end of 2006 his second book was published, a selection of essays entitled Kruh zgodnjih let, which one year later was nominated for the Rožanc prize for the best collection of essays. In early 2012 the author’s third book was released, titled Res neznosna resnobnost!?, which is a monograph dedicated to his favorite writer, Nobel Prize recipient J. M. Coetzee. In fall, 2015, his fourth book was published, namely, his first short story collection Garaže (Garages).
To date his texts have been translated into ten languages.
Since 2000 he has been working as an editor at the journal Literatura, which is issued by LUD Literatura and is one of the most important literary journal and publishing houses in Slovenia. Between 2002 and 2007, he edited the LUD Literatura book collection Prišleki, which presents represents the original Slovenian fiction. Since 2004, he has regularly taught in workshops for creative critics writing within the School Creative Writing, which is organized by LUD Literatura.
He has also published several (10) book and magazine translations of works by authors from the former Yugoslavia (M. Bazdulj, G. Ferčec, T. Gromača, I. Marojević, A. Nikolaidis, M. Pogačar, A. Prokopiev, A. Ristović, O. Spahić, S. Stanković, V. Tasić, S. Valjarević, M. Vujičić) and American authors (P. Auster, J. Franzen). As well, he has written numerous forewords to books by domestic and foreign writers.
He has participated in expert committees for all of the major Slovenian literary prizes and for the European Commission in Brussels.
