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Josip Novakovich is a Croatian Canadian writer.
Josip's great grandparents immigrated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to Cleveland, Ohio at a time when the smog was so thick one couldn't see the sun at high noon. His family was poor; old-timers from their Slavic neighborhood in Cleveland can remember seeing Mary, his great grandmother, carrying her babies in the streets, her feet bare in midwinter. At the end of the First World War, his grandfather, having met and married a wife of Slovenian descent, immigrated back to the old country, to a new Slavic nation formed in the aftermath of the war, Yugoslavia. Unfortunately, during the hardships of the Second World War, his grandparents split, one becoming an atheist, preaching against all wars, and the other, his grandmother, becoming a communist nurse. At war's end, she returned to Cleveland alone. Josip's mother, Ruth, who was born in Cleveland, was married at the time and remained in Yugoslavia. Josip Novakovich was born in Yugoslavia and grew up in the central Croatian town of Daruvar near the Hungarian border under the authoritarian rule of Tito. Novakovich studied medicine at the University of Novi Sad in Serbia. In spite of or to spite his good results at the university, at the age of 20 Josip moved to the USA, continuing his education at Vassar College, Yale University, and the University of Texas, Austin.
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