Kayako Yamasaki

Born on Sep­tem­ber 14. 1956. in Japan. She has been liv­ing in Bel­grade since 1981. She writes poet­ry and essays in Japan­ese and Ser­bian. She is a mem­ber of Ser­bian Lit­er­ary Society.

Six of her poet­ry col­lec­tions have been released in Japan­ese: Tori No Tameni(To Birds, 1995); Ubusuna, rod­i­na(Home­land, Rod­i­na, 1999); Bara, Mishi­ranu Kuni(Rose, Unknown Coun­try, 2001); Hisoy­a­ka Na Asa (Hid­den Morn­ing, 2004); Ato­su, Shizukana Tabibito(Atos, Silent Trav­el­ers, 2008); Mio­haya­mi(Mio­haya­mi, 2010) and six in Ser­bian:Skriveno jutro(Hid­den Morn­ing, 2001); Rod­i­na ubusuna(Home­land, Ubusuna,2004); Sanovnik, reka(Dream Book, Riv­er,2005); Olu­jni breg(Stormy Hill, 2008), Vodeni cve­tovi(Flow­ers in water, 2015); Svet­los­na obala(The Shore of light, 2016). She has trans­lat­ed works of many Ser­bian poets (Desan­ka Mak­si­mović, Ste­van Raick­ović, Miloš Crn­jan­s­ki etc) and romans of Dani­lo Kiš: Rani jadi(Ear­ly Sor­rows, 1995); Encik­lo­pe­di­ja mrtvih(The Ency­clo­pe­dia Of The Dead, 1999);Baš­ta, pepeo(Gar­den, Ash­es, 2009). 

She has writ­ten the study Japan­ese Avant­garde poet­ry, (Bel­grade, 2004). She is also the author of a few col­lec­tions of essays in Japan­ese: Beogu­ra­do nis­shi(A Poet­ry Diary from Bel­grade, Tokyo, 2014) ; Pan to noichi­go(Bread and wild straw­ber­ries, Tokyo, 2018).

She has won the Annu­al award for trans­la­tion into a for­eign lan­guage 1995/96. (Ser­bian P.E.N. Cen­ter, Bel­grade), Yomi­uri Prize for lit­er­a­ture (Tokyo, 2015), the Mil­i­ca Sto­jadi­nović Srp­kin­ja Award for Ser­bian poet­ry (Novi Sad, 2015) and the Veselin Lučić Award for Lit­er­ary work (Bel­grade, 2017).