Lulzim Tafa was born in 1970 in Lipjan, Kosovo. He completed his undergraduate and master’s studies at the Faculty of Law, University of Pristina, and his doctoral studies at the Faculty of Law, University of Sarajevo. He is a university professor and has worked at universities both in Kosovo and abroad. From 2012 to 2020, he served as the Rector of AAB College.
His poems have been translated into many world languages and included in several anthologies. He is the recipient of numerous prestigious international awards for literature, such as the “Mihai Eminescu”, “Radovan Zogović”, “Alexander the Great”, “Pablo Neruda”, among others. He has also received many national and international decorations and honors, such as the “Presidential Medal of Merits” from the President of the Republic of Kosovo, the “Yuri the Victor” Medal from the Holy Patriarch of Ukraine, and the Decoration of “Officer of the National Order of Arts and Letters” from the President of the Republic of France. His books have been translated into English, German, Italian, Serbian, Croatian, French, Bosnian, Montenegrin, Turkish, Greek, Romanian, Romani, Swedish, Arabic, Macedonian, Russian, Hungarian, Slovenian, Ukrainian, and other languages.
Lulzim Tafa is a regular member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, a regular member of the Academy of Arts and Letters in France, a foreign member of the Academy of Sciences of Albania, the Bosnian Academy, and others. He has been awarded multiple times the title of “Doctor Honoris Causa” from prestigious universities worldwide. He published his first poems as a student, and his first poetry book during his university studies. The war and humanitarian catastrophe of 1999 destroyed his personal library, along with over 300 handwritten poems.
He is one of the most renowned and most translated poets of Albanian literature in the world.
