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Born in Czechoslovakia, she grew up in Prague, where she completed her high-school studies and wrote her first literary works. In 1971 she was granted political asylum in Sweden. There she graduated from the University of Lund in the domain of Psychology. During the occupation and oppression of her native country she published in various exile media. She was one of the cofounders of an exile magazine published from the second half of the seventies to the beginning of nineties. At the same time, however, she also started publishing works in Swedish newspapers and journals.

She publishes articles, poetry, essays and novells in renowned Swedish media, e.g. G teborgs-Posten, Allt om B cker, Fenix, Ord & Bild, ppen Scen, Artes (published by The Swedish Academy, which is one of The Swedish Royal Academies) and Horisont. In Czech her work was published e.g. in Tvar, Obrys, Telegraf, Seversk listy, Britsk listy, Česk dialog, Česk kalend ř, Liter rn noviny and others. She also collaborated with second largest newspaper in the country and contributed to several anthologies.

Jana took part in many public readings - in Czech as well as in Swedish. She presented her work at Author Readings in Prag, Stockholm, Gothenburg, New York and elsewhere. Her poems have been translated into Swedish, Norwegian, English, Slovak, German and Persian. She definitely enjoys letters from her readers. You can read some of her poems from her book Trosečn ci kři t lov země (Castaways From the Crystal Country) in an English translation by clicking on "Poetry" to the left. Poems from this book received awards in an international competition in Stockholm amidst four thousand contributions from all over Europe. When this book came out, it was declared by the Czech radio to be among the best published in the last five years.
She got several awards, for example The literature grant from Swedish Arts Council, Grant for translations of her poetry from Czech Republic Ministry of Culture, Working grant from Swedish Authors Fund and others.
She translated poems of Tomas Transtr mer to Czech.