About Manica
Born in Ptuj, Slovenia, at first Manica Klenovšek Musil wanted to study piano. But she soon turned her attention to other areas, including architecture. After she graduated, her first building – the Municipal Building in Gorisnica (Slovenia) – won the international Grand Prix at the ‘Leonardo’ competition for young architects in Minsk, 2005. Meanwhile, she also won some awards for her graphic art. Between 2002 and and 2006 her work was featured on 11 Slovenian stamps. After the birth of first child (of three), she expanded her creativity and began to write stories and poems. Between 2011 and 2017 she published 9 children’s books for various distinguished Slovenian publishers. Her books are becoming increasingly known around the world. The animals from her books have inspired her to re-create them as installations for galleries or other public spaces. Why not even for parks…? It is most probably her background in architecture that makes her perceive her books rather more as entire projects than simply as books. As she has recently remarked, ‘When I get old (which I’ll probably never be), I want to have my own picture book museum. Eric Carle has one, there’s one in Japan, why not third one.’