As a child she went to
Cairo,
Egypt with her parents where she attended the primary
Port Said School in English. In Cairo she took piano lessons with
Croatian pianist Melita Lorkovic. In 1966 her parents transferred to
Milan,
Italy where she attended the international School of Milan (British School). In 1971 she enrolled at
University of Milan and studied Law School for two years which she abandoned to study Art and Cinema.
In 1976 she graduated Lettere Moderne at the University of Milan with a thesis on
Andrei Tarkovsky with Prof.
Adelio Ferrero. In 1977, she collaborated with
Umberto Silva on the movie Difficile morire.
She did conceptual video performances at the student cultural center of Belgrade SKC ("Love is only a Matter of Words," "An Unedited Being," etc.) and shot short films together with
Radoslav Vladić.
In 1994, together with
Slavica Stojanović, she founded the feminist publishing house "Feminist 94."
Her first book of essays "The Invisible Book" became a manifesto for alternative
Serbian feminist/pacifist culture. Since then she published several other fiction and essays books translated in several languages.
She is the author of Diary of a Political Idiot, a war diary written during the
NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and widely distributed on the
Internet.
Jasmina Tešanović is also an internationally known
writer, feminist and
political activist. She was one of the key figures on the feminist scene in the former
Yugoslavia and
Serbia.
Jasmina Tešanović was the co-organizer of the first international feminist
conference in the former Yugoslavia in 1978.
Me and My Multicultural Street (Feminist Publisher 94, Belgrade, Serbia, 2001)
Diary of a Political Idiot (
Cleis Press, San Francisco, California, 2000) — published in 12 languages
The Suitcase: Refugee Voices from Bosnia and Croatia (University of California Press, Berkeley, San Francisco, California, 1997)
Fiction
La Clandestina, Editkit editore, 2023, Italia
Klandestina, Rende, Beograd, Serbia,2022
La mia vita senza di me, Infinito edizioni, Italy 2014
Moj život bez mene, Rende, Belgrade, 2013
Nefertiti (Stampa Alternativa, Italy 2009)
The Necromancers/Nekromanti (play, 2007)
Nefertiti Was Here/Nefertiti je bila ovde (Belgrade Women's Studies, Centar za Zenske Studije, Beograd 2007)
They just do it (play, Feminist Notebooks, Belgrade, Serbia 1998)
The Mermaids (Publisher 94, Belgrade, Serbia 1997) —
Borislav Pekić Award recipient
A Women's Book (Publisher 94, Belgrade, Serbia 1996)
In Exile (Publisher 94, Belgrade, Serbia 1994)
The Invisible Book (KOV, Vrsac, Yugoslavia 1992)
Essays and short stories
Mothering in War ("Mothers of Adult children", edited by Marguerite Bouvard, Lexington Books, 2013)
"All Patients are Refugees" (Stories of Illness and Healing: Women Write their Bodies, edited by Sayantani Das Gupta and Marsha Hurst, The Kent State University Press, 2007)
"Baghdad/Belgrade Correspondence" (Writing the World: On Globalization, editors Wandee Pryor and Rothenberg, MIT Press, Boston Massachusetts 2005)
"Letter to My Imaginary American Friend" (Stop the Next War, editors Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans, Inner Ocean, San Francisco, California 2005)
"We Are All Women In Black" (Women on War, edited by Daniela Gioseffi, Feminist Press, New York, New York, 2003)
The Diary of a Political Idiot (Granta 67, Autumn, London, UK 1999)
"Lies and Secrets" (Index on Censorship, London, UK 1999)
Many short essays published on the blog Boing Boing, including "The Long Goodbye", concerning the funeral of
Slobodan Milosevic[3]
"Ja i moja multikulturalna ulica" (Feminist 94, Belgrade, 2001; translated into English as "Me and my multicultural street" in Bojana Kovačević's Master's thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Facultat de Traducció i d'Interpretació, Bellaterra, Barcelona, 2008)
Other writings for newspapers and TV including Serbian weekly NIN; Serbian daily Nasa Borba; The Washington Post; The Philadelphia Inquirer; L'Espresso; Panorama;
ABC TV; El País;
Al Jazeera; Flair; Grazia. She has a column in La Stampa, Italy, "I Globalisti" (together with her husband
Bruce Sterling) and Yellow Cab, Belgrade, Boing Boing.
Filmography
Difficile Morire, artistic collaboration on Umberto Silva's film, (Rome 1977)
Mother and Sinner, with Rade Vladic (Belgrade 1978)
Morning Midday Evening, with Rade Vladic, film based on a short story by David Albahari (Belgrade 1978)
Nefertiti Was Here (Belgrade 1978)
Nefertiti Was Here in Belgrade (Belgrade 2003)
Jasmina's Diary, with Dinko Tucakovic (Belgrade 1999).The film “Jasmina Diary” based on her diary of a political idiot, produced by SWR TV was distributed in many languages: ARTE TV, Italian TV, German TV, Serbian TV (B92). It was screened in various film festival, Venezia film festival 1999 among others, Leipzig film festival etc