About Aleksandar Hemon
Aleksandar Hemon is a prominent American-Bosnian poet and writer. Born on September 9, 1964, in Sarajevo, his fate took a radical turn in 1992: while he was in Chicago as a young journalist and tourist, war broke out in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Stranded in the United States and having become a refugee, he settled permanently in Chicago. Initially possessing only a rudimentary command of English, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2003 and a genius grant from the MacArthur Foundation in 2004 and he learned the language through the novels of Vladimir Nabokov and, remarkably, began publishing his first works in English as early as 1995. He quickly gained widespread recognition in The New Yorker and Esquire for his razor-sharp, darkly humorous prose, which frequently explores themes of exile, displacement, and wartime trauma and with "The Question of Bruno" (2000), his highly praised short story collections.He has written poetry, nonfiction, short story collections, and novels, most recently "The World and All That It Holds", his epic masterpiece published in 2023. This moving novel follows the fate of Rafael Pinto, a young Sephardic Jew from Sarajevo caught up in the chaos of World War I, traveling across continents and experiencing a forbidden love amid the ruins of the century. His writing genius also extends to the world of cinema, as he co-wrote the screenplay for the science fiction film The Matrix Resurrections (2021) alongside its creator, Lana Wachowski. His other major works of non-fiction include poignant autobiographical narratives, notably "My Parents: An Introduction" (2019) and his collection of essays, "The Book of My Lives" (2013), a finalist for the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award; the short story collection Love & Obstacles; and The Nowhere Man, also shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His earlier novel The Lazarus Project, was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award. Other notable works include his autobiography The Book of My Lives, a finalist for the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award; the short story collection Love & Obstacles; and The Nowhere Man, also shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Hemon now lives in New Jersey where he teaches creative writing at Princeton University. He performs music as Cielo Hemon.
Browse all poems and texts published on Aleksandar Hemon
I am a writer, which means I write stories, I write novels, and I would write poetry if I knew how to. I don't want to limit myself.
