In the village in eastern Slovenia where I grew up, everything is a border. You drive 30 kilometers and nobody speaks your language anymore. It is a meeting place of the Slovenian, German, Croatian and Hungarian, but also other cultures, languages, traditions and fears. As far as I look back, language for me was never something self-evident. Language is not only a tool. One must search permanently for language, strive actively for it. Language is the key, and searching for it is always unpredictable, sometimes even dangerous, and always closely connected with my destiny.
In the beginning there was poetry. I was writing poems, and over and over again I made discoveries about how many different forms poetry can have. Over the years I started writing poetry also in the form of novels and stories, in books for young adults, in travelogues and essays, in numerous collaborations with painters, musicians, photographers, theater makers and film directors. Readers tend to say that my writing has many different faces. In my eyes, my books and my other artistic projects are very strongly connected to each other and, regardless of their form, compose a unified world.
I love crossing artistic boundaries. I love doing new things which I was only dreaming about until recently. I love being awakened in language. I hope that you too are vigilant seekers, that you too feel attracted by what is open and alive and that you will encounter on this web site a fellow wanderer on your journey into the unpredictable.
Aleš Šteger, born 1973 in Ptuj, lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, novels, and essays as well as several books for young adults. He also works as an editor, translator and initiator of artistic and cultural events.
With ninety books translated into more than 20 languages, Aleš Šteger is one of the most translated and most acclaimed contemporary Slovenian authors. In 2016, he was described by the Bavarian Academy of Arts at the Horst Bienek International Poetry Prize as “one of the most original European poets of our time”. Pullitzer Prize winner Forrest Gander wrote of his poetry: “Although Šteger’s poems have that lightness about them that Italo Calvino so admired, they can be, you’ll soon see, devastating.” Ukrainian-American poet Ilya Kaminsky wrote: “Aleš Šteger is the real thing! He is the poet of inimitable gifts!”, German poet and Büchner Prize winner Durs Grünbein wrote of Šteger’s books that “each of his books is an important event for European literature”, and German-Croatian writer Marica Bodrožić wrote that he is finally “someone who refreshes the poetic landscape spiritually and writes poems in which the inevitable and grace have a place”. The Chilean poet Raúl Zurita wrote of Štegers’s poetry that “he has created a living language in an age when language is dying.” The Argentine-Canadian writer Alberto Manguel described the project Written On Site as “an attempt to chronicle the world through the collision of random fragments”.
Aleš’s texts have been included in the Slovenian school curriculum on several occasions and have been entered into the Cankar competition and the Slovenian and International Baccalaureate.
Aleš’s work often goes beyond the boundaries of literature. His poetry has been included in the projects of numerous galleries and museums, most recently the Louvre in Paris (2024). At the Kochi-Muziris Arts Biennale in India he created a large installation of a 15-metre-high pyramid with an inner maze dedicated to politically persecuted poets. As a librettist and lyricist, he has collaborated with the composers Uroš Rojko and Vito Žuraj, and with the Austrian musician Peter N. Gruber. He is the co-writer and lyricist of the feature-length documentary film about borders in Central Europe, Bezmejno/Beyond Boundaries (2016), directed by the German filmmaker Peter Zach. Between 2012 and 2023, he performed the writing performance Written on Site once a year in different places around the world. He has an intensive artistic collaboration with accordionist and composer Jure Tori. Together they have co-created the poetic musical ritual Above the Sky Below the Earth (2020), the historical cabaret My War Accordion (2023) and the storytelling-music performance Daedalus (2025).
He has received numerous Slovenian and international awards for his work. Among them the Slovenian Book Fair Award for the debut book of the last two years (1996), the Veronika Award (Slovenia, 1998), the Rožančeva Award (Slovenia, 2007), the Poetic Scepter (Macedonia, 2006), the Best translated book award (USA, 2011), the AATSEL Award (American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages, USA, 2011), Horst Bienek Prize for Poetry (Germany, 2016), Grand Oljenka of the City of Ptuj (Slovenia, 2017), Pretnar Prize (Slovenia, 2021), Alfred Kolleritsch Prize of the City of Graz (Austria, 2021), Siglo del Oro International Poetry Prize (Guadalajara, Mexico, 2023) and Prix Alain Bosquet International Poetry Prize (Paris, France, 2024) and Prix Max Jacob Etranger (2025).
He is a recipient of the title “chavalier de l’ordre des arts et des lettres” awarded by the Minister of Culture of the Republic of France, a corresponding member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and Arts, a full member of the Akademie der Künste (Academy of Fine Arts), Berlin, since 2014, and a full member of the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung (German Academy of Literature and Language), since 2018, He is also a Corresponding Member of the Akademie der Wissenschaft und der Literatur Mainz (Academy of Science and Literature Mainz) since 2019 and a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts (Bayrische Akademie der Schönen Künste) since 2019.
He is active as a translator from German and Spanish, primarily of poetry. He published book lenghts selections of poems by Pablo Neruda, Ingeborg Bachmann, Gottfried Benn, Peter Huchel, Olga Orózco, César Vallejo, Matthias Göritz and texts by Walter Benjamin.
Alongside his writing, Šteger has often acted as a generator of numerous Slovenian and international projects and initiatives. He co-founded the international poetry festival Days of Poetry and Wine in Ptuj (until 2007 in Medana), Slovenia (www.stihoteka.com), which he also directed for many years. In 2012, he was the program manager of the Terminal 12 program strand of the European Capital of Culture Maribor 2012. He is the conceptual initiator and program manager of the European platform for poetry Versopolis (www.versopolis.com). At the time of the establishment of the Tomaž Šalamun Centre for Poetry in 2016, he was appointed as the Centre’s trustee. He currently works as Program Director of Beletrina Publishing House
