Monika Herceg

Monika Herceg studied at University of Rijeka. The recorded working language is Croatian. The field of work recorded is literature and poetry. Residence is recorded at Sisak and Rijeka. Distinctions recorded are Fierce Women (award), Goran (award), Fran Galović Award and Slavić Award.

• Born — 1990 • Birthplace — Sisak, Sisak-Moslavina County, Croatia • Education — University of Rijeka • Occupation — * Poet • playwright • editor

Herceg was born in Sisak in 1990, and grew up in a village near the city. Her hometown was not far from the northern edge of the Republic of Serbian Krajina, an unrecognized Serb quasi-state that was active during the Croatian War of Independence. Herceg's formative years were therefore spent in the proximity of a war zone, which has influenced her work as an adult. She has spent more than ten years in exile. As a youth, Herceg felt "cut off from the rest of the world" due to her village's remote location. Her relatives were not habitual readers; she has described having no books in her house while growing up, but she was able to access reading materials with the help of her schoolteachers. Herceg began writing poetry while studying physics, financing her studies by working several jobs. One of these positions was hosting a student radio program named "Science on the Air," which communicated complex scientific topics to a wider audience.

Herceg first received recognition in 2017, when she won the Goran for Young Poets Award for her book Početne koordinate (Initial Coordinates). Told in the voice of Herceg's grandmother, Initial Coordinates portrays the experiences of impoverished women in twentieth-century rural Croatia. The following year, Herceg won the Kvirin Award for Young Poets and the Fran Galović Prize. At the 2019 Struga Poetry Evenings festival in Macedonia, Herceg was recognised as that year's Bridges of Struga Laureate. Later in the year, she became a member of Versopolis, a poetry platform supported by the European Union's Creative Europe Program that works to promote poets from the continent.

Herceg has criticised the anti-vaccination movement and creationism, describing them as anti-scientific and harmful to social progress. She has participated as a volunteer in hosting science workshops for children. Herceg has described Vera Rubin as her scientific hero.

Herceg is a feminist, which has influenced her body of work. Her 2020 play, Where Tenderness is Brought, was written to bring attention to the matter of violence against women and intergenerational trauma. This work received the Croatian National Theatre Award for the best new play. The next year, she was awarded by the Fierce Women project, a beneficiary of the European Social Fund, for her activism.

Herceg is a member of the Croatian P.E.N Centre, an arm of the international writers' association, PEN International. The centre's work concerns defending freedom of speech and advancing human rights through journalism and publishing. In May 2025, Herceg signed a statement in her role as a member of the Centre extending support for then-ongoing student protests in Serbia. In 2020, she attended a commemoration of the 1991 murder of the Zec family organised by the Anti-Fascist League of Croatia, where she read verses. While accepting the Gdańsk Literary Award at the European Poet of Freedom Festival in 2024, Herceg drew awareness to the European migrant crisis, the death tolls of the Russo-Ukrainian War and Genocide in Gaza, and abortion rights in Europe.

Herceg lives and works as an editor in Zagreb, and is a mother to two children. She is a member of the Croatian Writers Society, having served on the editorial board of its magazine since 2021.

Herceg believes that making science accessible to the masses is important to combat misinformation, and she often incorporates scientific concepts and thoughts into her creative work.

The creative work of Monika Herceg has been recognised with numerous major regional and international distinctions. In 2017, she received the Goran for Young Poets Award for Početne koordinate, followed in 2018 by the Kvirin Award for Young Poets and the Fran Galović Award. Her honours also include the Slavić Award, the Zvonko Milković Award, and recognition as the 2019 Bridges of Struga Laureate at the Struga Poetry Evenings festival in Macedonia. Her dramatic writing earned the Croatian National Theatre Award for best new play, while her social activism was recognised in 2021 with an award from the Fierce Women project, supported by the European Social Fund. In 2024, Herceg was awarded the Gdańsk Literary Award at the European Poet of Freedom Festival. Critical reception and academic analysis of Herceg’s oeuvre have grown significantly in recent scholarship. LALIC"; and a 2025 comparative analysis in Fluminensia titled "Disfunkcionalnost obitelji i transgeneracijski prijenos traume u Ubij se, tata Monike Herceg i Ostanak Hane Konsa". Additionally, the Directory of Open Access Journals lists one article explicitly naming Herceg. Whether further untranslated monographs exist in private archives remains unestablished in the current record.