Six features by Barbara BFJE alumna Matejcic, covering the problems of rejection, handicap and the power of superstition – but also people’s strength of purpose – are being published in Croatia.
“Kako ste?” [“How are you?”], published by Heinrich Boll, looks at the fate of so-called second-class citizens who are often invisible to most of society.
The features ask what it means to live with mental illness, what obstacles Roma children must overcome to be educated, what goes through the mind of a motionless person, how families with an undesirable national stigma survive in Croatia and what the fears of young women oppressed because of their sexual orientation are – among others.
A freelance journalist and editor from Zagreb in Croatia, Matejcic has long specialized in covering social issues.
She was recognized for the best written journalistic work in 2013 with the “Marija Juric Zagorka” award by the Croatian Journalists’ Association in 2014, and for the promotion of peace, nonviolence and human rights with the “Krunoslav Sukić” award (Center for Peace, 2013).
She received recognition for best monitoring of LGBT themes in Croatia from 2000 to 2010 from Zagreb Pride in 2011.
Matejcic was a BFJE fellow in 2009. Her story focused on the phenomenon of mixed marriages in cities that were once multi-ethnic communities in the former Yugoslavia, but which were destroyed by the war in the 1990s.