Ivo Andrić was born on October 9, 1892, in the village of Dolac near Travnik, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was a novelist, short story writer, and the 1961 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. His novels Bridge on the Drina and Bosnian Chronicle / The Days of the Consuls dealt with life in Bosnia under Ottoman Empire. Andrić is among the greatest Bosnian writers. Originally named Ivan, he became known by the diminutive Ivo. When Andrić was two years old, his father died. Because his mother was too poor to support him, he was raised by his aunt and uncle in the eastern Bosnian town of Višegrad on the river Drina. There he saw the Ottoman Bridge, later made famous in the novel The Bridge on the Drina. Andrić attended Sarajevo's gymnasium and later studied at the universities in Zagreb, Vienna, Krakow and Graz. During World War II, Andrić lived quietly in Belgrade, completing the three of his most famous novels which were published in 1945, including The Bridge on the Drina. After the war, Andrić held a number of ceremonial posts in the new Communist government of Yugoslavia, including that of the member of the presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1961, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature "for the epic force with which he has traced themes and depicted human destinies drawn from the history of his country." Following the death of his wife in 1968, he began reducing his public activities. As the time went by, he became increasingly ill and eventually died on March 13, 1975, in Belgrade. The material for his works was mainly drawn from the history, folklore and culture of his native Bosnia. Many of his works have been translated into English, the best known are the following: The Bridge on the Drina (Na Drini ćuprija, 1945; trans. 1959), The Woman from Sarajevo (Gospođica, 1945; trans. 1965), The Vizier's Elephant (Priča o vezirovom slonu, 1948; trans. 1962). Some of his other popular works include: The Journey of Alija Đerzelez (Put Alije Đerzeleza, 1920), The Days of the Consuls (Travnička hronika, 1945), The Damned Yard (Prokleta avlija, 1954), Omer-Pasha Latas (Omerpaša Latas, released posthumously in 1977)… Andrić is at his best in short stories, novellas and essayist meditative prose. Brilliant aphorisms and meditations, collected in his early poetic prose (Nemiri/"Anxieties") and, particularly, posthumously published Znakovi pored puta/"Signs near the travel-road" are great examples of a melancholic consciousness contemplating the universals in human condition - not unlike Andrić's chief influence Kierkegaard. His best short stories and novellas are located in his native Bosnia and Herzegovina and frequently center on collisions between the three main Bosnian nations: Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks. The latter are in his fiction almost exclusively referred to as "Turks". Although social and denominational tensions are the scene for the majority of stories, Andrić's shorter fictions cannot be reduced to a sort of regional chronicle: rooted frequently in rather prosaic and pedestrian Bosnian Franciscan chronicles, they are expressions of a vision of life, because for Andrić, as for other great regionalist authors like Hardy or Hawthorne, the regional irradiates the universal.

Musa Ćazim Ćatić (1878 Odžak-1915 Tešanj) is one of the most important BH writers. He spoke perfect Arabic, Turkish and Persian language. In 1898, he went to Carigrad, where he met Osman Đikić, and he comes back to Bosnia the following year, when he was mobilized in Tuzla and Budapest. Then he went to Istanbul again. Due to the financial problems, he comes back to Sarajevo and continues his studies. He colaborates with numerous magazines, especially Behar. Soon he becomes the editor of this magazine, graduates and moves to Zagreb. He starts his studies at the Faculty of law and in 1910 comes back to Bosnia. He becomes the editor of the magazine Biser in Mostar and writes poetry, essays, critics, translates numerous studies and books... In 1914, he was mobilized again, moved to Tuzla and then to Orkeny in Hungary. He starts suffering of tuberculosis and dies in Tešanj in 1915. All of his works were later collected in two books of poetry and prosis, under the title Collected works. Musa Ćazim Ćatić wrote about himself woman, nature, the world – in a word, he sang the life. And the life meant love for him, love as a spiritualis, like a mystical way of extasis...

Petar Kočić (1877 — 1916) was a poet and writer. Kočić was poet of Bosnian mountains and fresh life of his area. He was born in Stričići, a village near Banja Luka. He attended primary school in Gomjenica Monastery, during which time his mother died and his father became a priest. He started his gimnasium (high-school) education in Sarajevo, but he finished his secondary education in Belgrade. He studied Slavic Studies under the mentorship of famous Professor Jažić in Vienna, joining a circle of Bosnian students and writers interested in South Slavic literature and national liberation. In 1904 he came back to Serbia, and for a short while earned his living as a teacher in Skopje. Two years later, already a well-known writer and publicist, he returned to Sarajevo, this time as a clerk of publishing company "Prosveta". After Sarajevo, he went to Banjaluka. In Bosnia, he was one of the most prominent promoters of national pride, and a highly regarded preacher of social justice. Kočić wrote three collections of tales named From Mountain, and Under The Mountain, Howls From Zmijanje and two political-social satires: Badger on Tribunal and Trials, first in a form of play, and second in a form of dialogue.

Mehmedalija Mak Dizdar (Stolac 1917-Sarajevo 1971) was probably one of the greatest Bosnian and Herzegovinian poets of the 2nd half of the 20th century. Dizdar was a prominent figure in cultural life of Bosnia and Herzegovina, working as the editor in chief of the daily "Oslobođenje", head of a few state-sponsored publishing houses and, finallly, as a professional writer and the president of "Writers's union of Bosnia and Herzegovina" until his death. As a poet, Dizdar has in two poetic collections and longer poems, "Kameni spavač"/Stone sleeper (1966-1971) and "Modra rijeka" (1971) achieved magnificent fusion of seemingly disparate elements: inspired by medieval Bosnian tombstones ("stećci" or "mramorovi"/marbles) and their gnomic inscriptions on ephemerality of life, he produced exquisitely structured collection of pregnant verses saturated with his own, intimate, and yet universal vision of life and death that owes much to the Christian and Muslim Gnostic sensibility of life as a passage between "tomb and stars" — but not curtailed by any dogma. Dizdar's vision of life and death expresses, paradoxically, both Gnostic horror of corporeality and a sense of blessedness of the entire earth and Universe. Seems that as diverse strands as radiance of Bosnian pre-Ottoman cultural heritage exemplified in writings of Bosnian Christians, sayings of heterodox Islamic visionary mystics and Croatian vernacular linguistic idiom that fully emerged in 1400s, rich with archaic and spiritual meanings, have fused in a remarkable poetic opus- firmly rooted in Bosnian soil and universal in aesthetic and spiritual eminence.

Antun Branko Šimić was an expressionist poet. His literary achievements, his spirit and force of his creative work belong to the heights of Croatian poetic expression. He was born in Drinovci near Grude on November 18, 1898. He attended primary school in his native village, and then the first three forms of the Franciscan classical grammar school in Široki Brijeg. He decided to change school in the fourth form and went to Mostar and afterwards to Vinkovci. His unruly spirit made him change his surroundings again and so he continued his education in Zagreb, in the upper town grammar school. In 1917 he started the journal for art and culture, Vijavica (Storm), which forced him to leave school. This is when he lost his parents' support and it also meant a hard life overpowered by many illnesses. After four issues of Vijavica he also launched another journal, Juriš (Attack), which likewise had a short life of three issues only. He went on writing poems, literary and art critiques and also translating. He often had to live in straightened circumstances which caused many illnesses, so he went back to Drinovci and made up with his father. When he returned to Zagreb he launched his third journal, Književnik (Writer). At the Faculty of Philosophy he met Tatjana Marinić to whom he dedicated his one and only collection, Preobraženja (Metamorphoses) in 1920. He contracted tuberculosis and died on May 2, 1925 in Zagreb. Šimić did not write a large literary opus during his lifetime. However, some of his poems could be called anthological, like Pjesnici (Poets), Veče i ja (The Evening and I), Opomena (Warning), Ručak siromaha (The Poor Man's Dinner), Žene pred uredima (Women in Front of Offices), Smrt i ja (Death and I), Pjesma jednom brijegu (Poem to a Mountain), Smrt (Death), and some others. Antun Branko Šimić is the poet of Croatian destiny, human pain, miraculous poverty and wide starlit infinity. Indeed, poets are the amazement in the world. Some of his works, especially his travels writting, contain much ethnographic data whose analyses would make it possible to at least partly reconstruct the picture of life in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the first half of the nineteeth century.

Jovan Dučić is considered by many specialists to be one of the best writers of lyric poetry. Almost single- handedly, he changed the tone and sensibility, the themes, the vocabulary, the style, the rhythm, and the form of Serbian poetry, brilliantly bringing it up to European standards. As no one before or after, Dučić succeeded in integrating pictorial and symbolic representations, words and sounds, versification and music, original visionlike intuitive analyses, and descriptions of nature, culture, and the human soul to such an unheard-of degree that it was easy, as well as pleasurable, for many lovers of poetry to learn his poems by heart. Together with Milan Rakić, another great Serbian poet and contemporary, Dučić brought the alexandrine (a twelve-syllable line) and the eleven-syllable line to near perfection. It has often been said that Dučić composed many more high-quality poems than any other Serbian poet.

Aleksa Šantić (born May 27, 1868, died February 2, 1924) was a poet. He was born, brought up, lived most his life, and died in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He attended merchant schools in Trieste, Italy and Ljubljana, Slovenia. The work of Aleksa Šantić was both high in quality and high in volume, which earned him a high place in the pantheon of South Slavic poetry. He was strongly influenced by Jovan Jovanović Zmaj, Vojislav Ilić and Heinrich Heine. The topics and images of his poems ranged from strong emotions for social injustices of his time to nostalgic love. His poems about Mostar and the river Neretva breathe pure patriotism and are considered particularly beautiful. Šantić wrote a number of love songs in the style of the Bosniak love songs, sevdalinkas. His most well known song is Emina (popular female name), to which music was composed and it is often sung.

Mehmed Meša Selimović was one of the greatest 20th century novelists of Southeastern Europe. He wrote his novels in Serbo-Croatian language and his language variant greatly influenced today's Bosnian standard language. He wrote his novels about Bosnia and Herzegovina and Bosniak culture in the Ottoman era. He started his most famous novel Death and the Dervish according to traditional Bosniak heritage when starting any kind of job, with the words: "In the name of Allah, the most kind, the most merciful". He was born on April 26, 1910 in Tuzla, Bosnia, where he graduated from elementary school and high school. In 1930, he enrolled to study the Serbo-Croatian language and literature at the University of Belgrade. In 1936, he returned to Tuzla to teach in the high school that today bears his name. From 1947 to 1971 he lived in Sarajevo, then moving to Belgrade to spend the rest of his life, where he died in 1982. He wrote at least ten significant novels, the most important thereof being one that he wrote because his brother was in prison at Goli otok, Death and the Dervish (Derviš i smrt), speaking of the futility of one man's resistance against a pushing system, and the change that takes place within that man after he becomes a part of that very system, sometimes resembling Kafka's Prozess in several ways. The only other of his works to be translated into English is The Fortress. Nikola Šop (Jajce, 1904- Zagreb,1982) was a mystic, a schoolteacher, and a translator of the Latin classics, as well as of Renaissance Croatian poets who also wrote in Latin. But at the end of the 1950s, he began composing uniquely inspired verse about space and the human awareness of the cosmos. He titled a collection of these writings Astralia. Among the best of Šop's poems in this distinctive genre is one titled "Space Visits”. His famous selections of poems are: “Pjesme siromašnog sina” (The poems of a poor son) (1926.), “Isus i moja sjena” (Isus and my Shadow)(1934.), “Od ranih do kasnih pijetlova” (From the early to the late cocks“ (1939.), “Za kasnim stolom” (At the late time lable) (1943.),“Kućice u svemiru” (Space houses) (1957.), “Astralije” (Australias) (1961.).

Filip Višnjić (1767-1834) was born in Semberija. Some of his remarkable songs are the first part of The Fight at Mišar and the beautiful song Duke Ivan Knežević. Although he created within traditional frames of folk epics and used standard clishees and formulas, in his best moments he created the epics of new type, a revolutional song. He is considered to be one of the most significant writers of this new, revolutional type of epics. (1878 Odžak-1915 Tešanj) is one of the most important BH writers. He spoke perfect Arabic, Turkish and Persian language. In 1898, he went to Carigrad, where he met Osman Đikić, and he comes back to Bosnia the following year, when he was mobilized in Tuzla and Budapest. Then he went to Istanbul again. Due to the financial problems, he comes back to Sarajevo and continues his studies. He colaborates with numerous magazines, especially Behar. Soon he becomes the editor of this magazine, graduates and moves to Zagreb. He starts his studies at the Faculty of law and in 1910 comes back to Bosnia. He becomes the editor of the magazine Biser in Mostar and writes poetry, essays, critics, translates numerous studies and books... In 1914, he was mobilized again, moved to Tuzla and then to Orkeny in Hungary. He starts suffering of tuberculosis and dies in Tešanj in 1915. All of his works were later collected in two books of poetry and prosis, under the title Collected works. Musa Ćazim Ćatić wrote about himself woman, nature, the world – in a word, he sang the life. And the life meant love for him, love as a spiritualis, like a mystical way of extasis...

Petar Kočić (1877 — 1916) was a poet and writer. Kočić was poet of Bosnian mountains and fresh life of his area. He was born in Stričići, a village near Banja Luka. He attended primary school in Gomjenica Monastery, during which time his mother died and his father became a priest. He started his gimnasium (high-school) education in Sarajevo, but he finished his secondary education in Belgrade. He studied Slavic Studies under the mentorship of famous Professor Jažić in Vienna, joining a circle of Bosnian students and writers interested in South Slavic literature and national liberation. In 1904 he came back to Serbia, and for a short while earned his living as a teacher in Skopje. Two years later, already a well-known writer and publicist, he returned to Sarajevo, this time as a clerk of publishing company "Prosveta". After Sarajevo, he went to Banjaluka. In Bosnia, he was one of the most prominent promoters of national pride, and a highly regarded preacher of social justice. Kočić wrote three collections of tales named From Mountain, and Under The Mountain, Howls From Zmijanje and two political-social satires: Badger on Tribunal and Trials, first in a form of play, and second in a form of dialogue.

Mehmedalija Mak Dizdar (Stolac 1917-Sarajevo 1971) was probably one of the greatest Bosnian and Herzegovinian poets of the 2nd half of the 20th century. Dizdar was a prominent figure in cultural life of Bosnia and Herzegovina, working as the editor in chief of the daily "Oslobođenje", head of a few state-sponsored publishing houses and, finallly, as a professional writer and the president of "Writers's union of Bosnia and Herzegovina" until his death.
As a poet, Dizdar has in two poetic collections and longer poems, "Kameni spavač"/Stone sleeper (1966-1971) and "Modra rijeka" (1971) achieved magnificent fusion of seemingly disparate elements: inspired by medieval Bosnian tombstones ("stećci" or "mramorovi"/marbles) and their gnomic inscriptions on ephemerality of life, he produced exquisitely structured collection of pregnant verses saturated with his own, intimate, and yet universal vision of life and death that owes much to the Christian and Muslim Gnostic sensibility of life as a passage between "tomb and stars" — but not curtailed by any dogma. Dizdar's vision of life and death expresses, paradoxically, both Gnostic horror of corporeality and a sense of blessedness of the entire earth and Universe. Seems that as diverse strands as radiance of Bosnian pre-Ottoman cultural heritage exemplified in writings of Bosnian Christians, sayings of heterodox Islamic visionary mystics and Croatian vernacular linguistic idiom that fully emerged in 1400s, rich with archaic and spiritual meanings, have fused in a remarkable poetic opus- firmly rooted in Bosnian soil and universal in aesthetic and spiritual eminence.

Antun Branko Šimić was an expressionist poet. His literary achievements, his spirit and force of his creative work belong to the heights of Croatian poetic expression. He was born in Drinovci near Grude on November 18, 1898. He attended primary school in his native village, and then the first three forms of the Franciscan classical grammar school in Široki Brijeg. He decided to change school in the fourth form and went to Mostar and afterwards to Vinkovci. His unruly spirit made him change his surroundings again and so he continued his education in Zagreb, in the upper town grammar school. In 1917 he started the journal for art and culture, Vijavica (Storm), which forced him to leave school. This is when he lost his parents' support and it also meant a hard life overpowered by many illnesses. After four issues of Vijavica he also launched another journal, Juriš (Attack), which likewise had a short life of three issues only. He went on writing poems, literary and art critiques and also translating. He often had to live in straightened circumstances which caused many illnesses, so he went back to Drinovci and made up with his father. When he returned to Zagreb he launched his third journal, Književnik (Writer). At the Faculty of Philosophy he met Tatjana Marinić to whom he dedicated his one and only collection, Preobraženja (Metamorphoses) in 1920. He contracted tuberculosis and died on May 2, 1925 in Zagreb. Šimić did not write a large literary opus during his lifetime. However, some of his poems could be called anthological, like Pjesnici (Poets), Veče i ja (The Evening and I), Opomena (Warning), Ručak siromaha (The Poor Man's Dinner), Žene pred uredima (Women in Front of Offices), Smrt i ja (Death and I), Pjesma jednom brijegu (Poem to a Mountain), Smrt (Death), and some others. Antun Branko Šimić is the poet of Croatian destiny, human pain, miraculous poverty and wide starlit infinity. Indeed, poets are the amazement in the world. Some of his works, especially his travels writting, contain much ethnographic data whose analyses would make it possible to at least partly reconstruct the picture of life in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the first half of the nineteeth century.

Jovan Dučić is considered by many specialists to be one of the best writers of lyric poetry. Almost single- handedly, he changed the tone and sensibility, the themes, the vocabulary, the style, the rhythm, and the form of Serbian poetry, brilliantly bringing it up to European standards. As no one before or after, Dučić succeeded in integrating pictorial and symbolic representations, words and sounds, versification and music, original visionlike intuitive analyses, and descriptions of nature, culture, and the human soul to such an unheard-of degree that it was easy, as well as pleasurable, for many lovers of poetry to learn his poems by heart. Together with Milan Rakić, another great Serbian poet and contemporary, Dučić brought the alexandrine (a twelve-syllable line) and the eleven-syllable line to near perfection. It has often been said that Dučić composed many more high-quality poems than any other Serbian poet.
Aleksa Šantić (born May 27, 1868, died February 2, 1924) was a poet. He was born, brought up, lived most his life, and died in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He attended merchant schools in Trieste, Italy and Ljubljana, Slovenia. The work of Aleksa Šantić was both high in quality and high in volume, which earned him a high place in the pantheon of South Slavic poetry. He was strongly influenced by Jovan Jovanović Zmaj, Vojislav Ilić and Heinrich Heine. The topics and images of his poems ranged from strong emotions for social injustices of his time to nostalgic love. His poems about Mostar and the river Neretva breathe pure patriotism and are considered particularly beautiful. Šantić wrote a number of love songs in the style of the Bosniak love songs, sevdalinkas. His most well known song is Emina (popular female name), to which music was composed and it is often sung.

Mehmed Meša Selimović was one of the greatest 20th century novelists of Southeastern Europe. He wrote his novels in Serbo-Croatian language and his language variant greatly influenced today's Bosnian standard language. He wrote his novels about Bosnia and Herzegovina and Bosniak culture in the Ottoman era. He started his most famous novel Death and the Dervish according to traditional Bosniak heritage when starting any kind of job, with the words: "In the name of Allah, the most kind, the most merciful". He was born on April 26, 1910 in Tuzla, Bosnia, where he graduated from elementary school and high school. In 1930, he enrolled to study the Serbo-Croatian language and literature at the University of Belgrade. In 1936, he returned to Tuzla to teach in the high school that today bears his name. From 1947 to 1971 he lived in Sarajevo, then moving to Belgrade to spend the rest of his life, where he died in 1982.
He wrote at least ten significant novels, the most important thereof being one that he wrote because his brother was in prison at Goli otok, Death and the Dervish (Derviš i smrt), speaking of the futility of one man's resistance against a pushing system, and the change that takes place within that man after he becomes a part of that very system, sometimes resembling Kafka's Prozess in several ways. The only other of his works to be translated into English is The Fortress.

Nikola Šop (Jajce, 1904- Zagreb,1982) was a mystic, a schoolteacher, and a translator of the Latin classics, as well as of Renaissance Croatian poets who also wrote in Latin. But at the end of the 1950s, he began composing uniquely inspired verse about space and the human awareness of the cosmos. He titled a collection of these writings Astralia. Among the best of Šop's poems in this distinctive genre is one titled "Space Visits”. His famous selections of poems are: “Pjesme siromašnog sina” (The poems of a poor son) (1926.), “Isus i moja sjena” (Isus and my Shadow)(1934.), “Od ranih do kasnih pijetlova” (From the early to the late cocks“ (1939.), “Za kasnim stolom” (At the late time lable) (1943.),“Kućice u svemiru” (Space houses) (1957.), “Astralije” (Australias) (1961.).

Filip Višnjić (1767-1834) was born in Semberija. Some of his remarkable songs are the first part of The Fight at Mišar and the beautiful song Duke Ivan Knežević. Although he created within traditional frames of folk epics and used standard clishees and formulas, in his best moments he created the epics of new type, a revolutional song. He is considered to be one of the most significant writers of this new, revolutional type of epics.