Interview Series: Erica Johnson Debeljak

Erica Johnson Debeljak moved from New York City to Ljubljana in 1993 to marry Slovenian poet, Aleš Debeljak. During the years she’s lived in Slovenia, she had become a writer, publishing three books in Slovenian translation in her adopted country, a well-known columnist and commentator, and the mother of three children. Now her first book has been published in the United States. It is a memoir entitled Forbidden Bread (North Atlantic Books) and is about falling in love and moving to Slovenia in the 1990s.

Before you moved to Slovenia, you were working in investment banking in New York. How did you become a writer?

Looking at the situation in investment banking now, it looks like a fortuitous career change. But at the time, in 1993, it was difficult for foreigners (even those married to local Slovenians) to get a permit to work in Slovenia. So instead of getting a job right away, I studied the language and started to become a language editor for English translations, eventually a translator, and in 1999, I published my first book Tujka v hiši domačinov (Foreigner in the House of Natives), which was a critical and popular success. After that, I never looked back. Slovenia not only gave me a wonderful home and a family, but a new and meaningful calling which I probably wouldn’t have had in the United States.

Your first book, Foreigner in the House of Natives, was also about coming to Slovenia? How does your new book, Forbidden Bread, differ?

It’s been a long voyage. Foreigner, published in 1999 (and first appearing as a feuilleton in the Slovenian newspaper Delo), was more essayistic and thematic. It was my first effort at writing a fulllength work and, though it was fascinating for Slovenians and went through a number of printings, it didn’t quite suit the demands of the American market at the time. Nearly ten years later, I was approached by North Atlantic books, a California publishing house that is particularly interested in international memoirs by women and has published a number of Slovenian books in translation. They asked me to rewrite Foreigner in a more novelistic way, highlighting the love story that brought me to Slovenia, and the specific people and characters I met along the way. So Forbidden Bread is really a completely new book about the same experience. It was particularly gratifying, with the gift of time and hindsight, to paint a more complete picture of Slovenia in the 1990s which was a fascinating time: combining the quirky and sometimes charming specificities of the fading communist and Yugoslav system with the hopes of a new democratic beginning, all against the backdrop of the terrible wars going on to the south. I think I was able to capture the very special, bitter-sweet quality of that decade in Forbidden Bread.

As an American-Slovenian living in Slovenia, what part of your intercultural engagement do you find the most rewarding?

There are so many rewarding aspects that it is hard to name one. I think the most surprising and moving element is my connection to my Slovenian readership. I have been truly accepted in Slovenia and, during literary events and at book groups, I have sensed a level of intimacy and appreciation that I doubt even the most successful American writers enjoy. Now, with this new book, I have the chance to reach a new audience: the Slovenian-American community in the United States, and I am very excited about that. 

Related Links:

• Erica’s website
• Purchase her book on Amazon