Simona Semenič

Simona Semenič (1975) is a playwright, author, performer, and teacher. She graduated from the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film, and Television (AGRFT) in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Simona is a recipient of the Prešeren Fund Award, the highest national award for artistic creation. She is a three-time winner of the Grum Prize, the national Best Play award. She was awarded for plays 5boys.si (2009), 24hrs (2010) and Seven Cooks, Four Soldiers and Three Sophias (2015) and was nominated for 1981 (2014), This Apple, Made of Gold (2017), and You are the Miracle (2020). In 2020 Simona also won the best novel award Modra Ptica for Secret Society KRVZ.

Her plays were translated into twenty languages and they were staged in several countries in Europe, the USA, and the Middle East and also published in several countries outside her homeland. Other plays include You Didn’t Forget You Just Don’t Remember Anymore, The Feast, Blame It All on Donnie Darko, Sophia, We, the European Corpses, The Last Love Letter, Rowan, Strudel, Dance, and More, That’s Not It and Beautiful Vidas Burn Beautifully. Productions of her plays won numerous awards in Slovenia and abroad.

Simona also writes, directs, and performs experimental theatre shows, which include 9 easy pieces (2007, with artistic group Preglej), I, the Victim. (2007), Do Me Twice (2009), 43 Happy Ends (2010, with artistic group Preglej), Kapelj and Semenič Under Construction (2012, with Barbara Kapelj), Bulc and Semenič For Sale (2013, with Mare Bulc), The Second Time (2014), To Last (2018) and Picture Perfect (2020). Her shows have been receiving outstanding notices from the audience and theater theoreticians and Simona performs them at festivals in Slovenia and abroad. She has also been present in visual arts, her works Note to an Entirety (2009-2018, with Nada Žgank) and His Dreamery (2020, with Nada Žgank) have been exhibited multiple times.

In the last decade, Simona has been also involved in teaching. She teaches playwriting at Trubar Literature House Ljubljana and also at many workshops for theater and creative writing in Slovenia and abroad.

Her works are published in books Do You Hear Me (KUD AAC Zrakogled, 2017), Three Dramas (Beletrina, 2017), English version Do You Hear Me (Mesto žensk, KUD AAC Zrakogled, 2019), Secret Society KRVZ (Mladinska knjiga, 2020), and 1981 (JSKD, 2020).

Simona lives in Ljubljana with her two sons.

More at www.simonasemenic.com.