Goran Vojnović

Who is Goran Vojnović?

Goran Vojnović is a Slovenian writer, poet, screenwriter and film director of Croatian origin. He is best known for his 2008 novel Southern Scum Go Home which won him numerous awards as well as a lawsuit filed by the Slovenian Police that was withdrawn a day later after media attention and public outrage at police filing charges for a work of fiction brought embarrassment to the Slovenian Ministry of Interior.

Vojnović was born in Ljubljana. He studied at the Academy for Theatre, Radio, Film and Television. He published his first collection of poetry Lep je ta svet in 1998. His novel Čefurji raus! started out as an unfinished film script. It describes life of immigrant youth in the Fužine estate in Ljubljana, their everyday problems and cultural differences between locals and immigrants from the former Yugoslavia. For it he won the Prešeren Foundation Award and the Kresnik Award in 2009. It has been translated and published in Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian and excerpts translated into German and English.

In 2006 the short film Sretan put Nedime for which he wrote the script won the Best Short Film Award at the Sarajevo Film Festival which got it a nomination for the European Film Academy Best Short Film Award for 2006.