Helena PERIČIĆ HERENDA is a Croatian writer, literary scholar, and university professor, specializing in comparative literature. Her work encompasses fiction, drama, poetry, and academic research, bringing together creative expression and scholarly inquiry into literature as a dialogue among cultures, traditions, and ideas. She has published numerous literary and scholarly works, exploring themes of memory, history, identity, and the complexities of human experience.
As a professor of literature, Helena Peričić Herenda has dedicated her academic work to Croatian literature, theatre and drama studies, and literary criticism. Her research combines rigorous scholarly analysis with a deep interest in cultural memory, artistic expression, and the relationship between literature(s) and society.
In her academic research, she has particularly focused on the relationship between Croatian and foreign literatures, and cultural mediators in literary criticism and literary production, exploring the influence of world literature on Croatian literary works, questions of intertextuality, and comparative approaches to literary texts across different cultural contexts. Her studies of Croatian drama and literature reveal a sustained interest in the ways in which literary works communicate, transform, and reinterpret inherited motifs, forms, and ideas under the influence of external, ideological, and worldview forces.
Her literary oeuvre includes poetry, the volume of dramatic works Izići na svjetlo (Stepping into the Light, 2005), the prose collection Domnana i bijele ovce (Domnana and the White Sheep, 2007), the documentary-literary book On The Red Horse, Peter and Paul (A Small Book about a Big War): Diary Entries, Articles, Letters…1991-1998 (bilingual Croatian-English edition, 2010), and the short story collection Zaštićene vrste (Protected Species; 2025). Her literary work is characterised by a distinctive narrative voice, psychological insight, subtle irony, and a sensitive exploration of contemporary life. Her writing and scholarly contributions have established her as a versatile author whose work bridges creative imagination and critical thought.