Pino Pograjc

Pino Pograjc (1997, Ljubljana) graduated from the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, with a double MA in English and Comparative Literature. He grew up in Kamnik, where he attended gymnasium and first read his poems in front of an audience at slam poetry competitions at the Kotlovnica Youth Center and won several times. In 2022, the publishing house Črna skrinjica (‘Black Box’) published his debut poetry collection, Trgetanje, for which he won the prize for the best literary debut awarded at the 38th Slovenian Book Fair. In March 2024, his second collection of poetry, Trepete, was published by ŠKUC – Lambda, after which he won the Mlado pero (‘Young Pen’) award, which is given out by the Delo newspaper. His third collection, Megalomast in Izbruhijada, was published by Black Box in November 2024. It has been listed by literary figures as one of the ‘books of the year’ in Delo, Dnevnik, Mladina, on the Disenz platform and in the 10 Books from Slovenia 2025 bulletin, which is published by the Centre for Slovene Literature. On the initiative of the curators of the Mediterranea 20 biennale (as part of the European Capital of Culture – Nova Gorica project) he compiled Schizofag, a chapbook of his poems, which he translated into English. Pograjc organises a series of LGBT+ literary events Kviropisje at Club Tiffany. In November 2024, the Ministry of Culture granted Pograjc the status of self-employed person in culture. Before that he worked at a car wash, at a restaurant as a waiter, at a lottery booth as a cashier, as a television program subtitler and translator and as an English tutor. In his writing, Pograjc focuses on the intersections of his different identity markers and experiences through an oftentimes prosaic, confessional, diary-like style – he writes mostly about being queer and living with diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia.

Photo by Goran Tomčić