Aleš Debeljak

He was married to the columnist, translator and American-Slovenian writer Erica Johnson Debeljak, with whom he had three children. He died on 28 January 2016, when he was struck and killed by a truck.

From 2001 he started the journal Sarajevo notebooks, in order to re-establish communication and linkages between intellectuals and activists throughout former Yugoslavia, and create regional public forums of reconciliation.

In 1991 he worked as interpreter for foreign media during the Ten-Day War, and witnessed first-hand the Yugoslav-Slovene armed clashes at the Austrian border in Gornja Radgona. He described the experience as something that changed his point of view, as something that had been deemed impossible was actually taking place, "as if we were in a movie".

He graduated from comparative literature at the University of Ljubljana in 1985. He continued his studies in the United States, obtaining a PhD in sociology of culture at Syracuse University in 1989. He was later a Senior Fulbright fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. He also worked at the Institute for Advanced Studies Collegium Budapest, the Civitella Ranieri Center and the Bogliasco Liguria Study Center for the Arts and Humanities.

From the mid-1980s onwards, Debeljak took an active part in civil society movements. He decided to come back to Slovenia at the time of the dissolution of Yugoslavia as, he said, he did not want to become a "Balkan-observer" from abroad, but rather wanted to take part directly in those moments.

Aleš Debeljak (25 December 1961 – 28 January 2016), was a Slovenian cultural critic, poet, and essayist.