Bio

Vesna Kurilić is a historical fantasy writer and werewolf-loving, skirt-making ex-librarian. Her main literary focus is reclaiming local history on behalf of non-binary, queer folks like herself, and making it accessible and relatable to readers. A native and resident of Rijeka, Croatia, she’s the author of the queer retrofuturistic mystery series Ranger Paraversum.

Other than history, architecture and sapphic ladies, she’s passionate about helping new writers get a grip over this writing life thing and promoting speculative fiction while out and about.

For an archive of tips and tricks on writing and inside info, check out her newsletter, Skirts’n’Wolves and the writing articles archive on this very site. To get in touch, find Vesna on Twitter and Facebook or come meet the resident furry (and clawy) writer’s assistants over at her Instagram.

Fiction

Vesna Kurilić started writing with short stories back in the mid-nineties, and publishing short fiction in mid-2000s. Some of her more recent stories are available online in English and Croatian, including her short, bloody and geeky M/M cosplay story, The Gentleman.

Her first novel, published in Croatian in 2017, Izazov krvi, combined with her love of local history and her art history diploma, paved the way for her current retrofuturistic queer mystery series Ranger Paraversum (more here).

She has earned three SFERA awards (2012, 2014 and 2018) and one Artefakt (2018) for her fiction and multimedia projects (Larp “Astra”), while fiction she’s helped edit has gone on to win their authors several more.<3

Non-fiction

Vesna’s blog, Skirts’n’Wolves, started as a larping advice and geek life central, and gradually turned into all things writing—mostly articles on how to keep motivated as a writer in the long run and what to do when said motivation runs out.

As a librarian, she has written a couple dozen insider columns Stranica 33 (Page 33) for the library she grew up in, in Croatian, collected here.

Editing

Since 2020, Vesna has been working with new and more experienced writers on polishing their fiction and getting their manuscripts ready for their future readers and fans. If you’d like to work with her on your fiction in both English and Croatian, you can check her available slots through her editing service, Shtriga Edits.

Education

After eight years of teaching librarians about book clubs and everyone else how to survive their commercial fiction fascination while living in a non-genre-loving world, Vesna’s recent foray into education includes Shtriga’s inaugural, 7-week program Od romana do knjige – poslovna strana pisanja.

Collabs

Vesna is the co-founder of and she currently works alongside Antonija Mežnarić as an editor and publisher at the Croatian small press Shtriga, where she’s copyedited and helped edit several novels, novellas and collections, including the beauty called Slavic Supernatural.

On the home front, she’s the co-founder and co-editor of the Croatian online magazine for speculative fiction Morina kutija, with Antonija Mežnarić and Igor Rendić, and there’s even a writing podcast (in Croatian) there, Mora FM, the place to go for tea and coffee on writing and publishing SFF&H as a south-Slavic author.

She was one of the co-founders and editors for the project Decameron 2020: Priče iz Karantene, with Antonija Mežnarić and Ana Cerovac, which was listed as a recommended online resource by the Croatian Ministry of Culture during 2020.

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