Monika Herceg

Herceg was born in Sisak in 1990, and grew up in a village near the city.^[3][6] Her hometown was not far from the northern edge of the Republic of Serbian Krajina, an unrecognized Serb quasi-state that was active during the Croatian War of Independence.^[6][7] Herceg's formative years were therefore spent in the proximity of a war zone, which has influenced her work as an adult.^[6] She has spent more than ten years in exile.

As a youth, Herceg felt "cut off from the rest of the world" due to her village's remote location.^[6] Her relatives were not habitual readers; she has described having no books in her house while growing up, but she was able to access reading materials with the help of her schoolteachers.^[8]

Herceg began writing poetry while studying physics, financing her studies by working several jobs.^[8] One of these positions was hosting a student radio program named "Science on the Air," which communicated complex scientific topics to a wider audience.^[9]

Herceg first received recognition in 2017, when she won the Goran for Young Poets Award for her book Početne koordinate (Initial Coordinates).^[10] Told in the voice of Herceg's grandmother, Initial Coordinates portrays the experiences of impoverished women in twentieth-century rural Croatia.^[8] The following year, Herceg won the Kvirin Award for Young Poets^[11] and the Fran Galović Prize.^[12]

At the 2019 Struga Poetry Evenings festival in Macedonia, Herceg was recognised as that year's Bridges of Struga Laureate.^[10] Later in the year, she became a member of Versopolis,^[13] a poetry platform supported by the European Union's Creative Europe Program that works to promote poets from the continent.^[14]

Herceg believes that making science accessible to the masses is important to combat misinformation,^[9] and she often incorporates scientific concepts and thoughts into her creative work.^[8][15]

Herceg has criticised the anti-vaccination movement and creationism, describing them as anti-scientific and harmful to social progress.^[9] She has participated as a volunteer in hosting science workshops for children.^[9] Herceg has described Vera Rubin as her scientific hero.^[15]

Herceg is a feminist, which has influenced her body of work.^[16] Her 2020 play, Where Tenderness is Brought, was written to bring attention to the matter of violence against women and intergenerational trauma.^[16] This work received the Croatian National Theatre Award for the best new play.^[16] The next year, she was awarded by the Fierce Women project, a beneficiary of the European Social Fund,^[17] for her activism.^[16]

Herceg is a member of the Croatian P.E.N Centre, an arm of the international writers' association, PEN International.^[18] The Centre's work concerns defending freedom of speech and advancing human rights through journalism and publishing.^[19] In May 2025, Herceg signed a statement in her role as a member of the Centre extending support for then-ongoing student protests in Serbia.^[20]

In 2020, she attended a commemoration of the 1991 murder of the Zec family organised by the Anti-Fascist League of Croatia, where she read verses.^[21]

While accepting the Gdańsk Literary Award at the European Poet of Freedom Festival in 2024, Herceg drew awareness to the European migrant crisis, the death tolls of the Russo-Ukrainian War and Genocide in Gaza, and abortion rights in Europe.^[22]

Herceg lives and works as an editor in Zagreb, and is a mother to two children. She is a member of the Croatian Writers Society, having served on the editorial board of its magazine since 2021.^[23]